Gawain

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Gawaine

Sir Gawain (Gawan, Gauvain, Walewein etc.) is King Arthur's nephew and a Knight of the Round Table who appears very early in the Arthurian legend's development. He is almost always portrayed as the son of Arthur's sister Morgause (or Anna) and King Lot of Orkney and Lothian, and his brothers are Agravain, Gaheris, Gareth, and Mordred. In some works he has sisters as well. Gawain is often portrayed as a formidable but brash knight, fiercely loyal to his king and family. He is a friend to young knights, a defender of the poor, and a consummate ladies' man. His strength waxes and wanes with the sun: his might triples by noon, but fades as the sun sets. He is credited with at least three children: Florence, Lovell, and Gingalain, the last of which is also called Libeaus Desconus or Le Bel Inconnu, the Fair Unknown. At least in later Welsh Arthurian literature, Gawain is considered synonymous with the native champion Gwalchmei.

Gwalchmei

Gawain is commonly considered identical with the Welsh hero known as Gwalchmei ap Gwyar (Gwalchmei, son of Gwyar), who appears in the Welsh Triads and in Culhwch and Olwen, an Arthurian romance associated with the Mabinogion. His appearance in Culhwch, which probably dates to the 11th century, makes him, like Cai (Kay) and Bedwyr (Bedivere), one of the earliest characters associated with Arthur. Here Gwalchmei, like Gawain, is Arthur's nephew and one of his chief warriors; Arthur sends him and five other champions with the protagonist Culhwch on his journey to find his love Olwen.

Scholars are not entirely convinced that the later character of Gawain is derived from the Welsh Gwalchmei ap Gwyar (Gwalchmei, son of Gwyar), but later Welsh writers clearly thought this was the case; the name "Gwalchmei" consistently substitutes for "Gawain" in Cymric translations and adaptations of foreign works, such as the Welsh Romances of the Mabinogion. The name itself is the subject of speculation; in Welsh, the term gwalch translates as falcon or hawk, but mei has no known meaning. A popular suggestion is that the latter word refers to the month of May (Welsh: Mai), rendering the name "Hawk of May". The spelling "Gwalchmai" has become popular, and there is a small village in Anglesey called Gwalchmai.

Gawain in early literature

In the Gesta Regum Anglorum of around 1120, William of Malmesbury records that Gawain's grave had been uncovered in Pembrokeshire during the reign of William the Conqueror, and writes that the great nephew of Arthur had been driven from his kingdom by Hengest's brother, though he continued to harry them severely.

Gawain is a major character in the Arthurian section of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae, where he is a superior warrior and potential heir to the throne until he is tragically struck down by Mordred's evil forces, and the sheer amount of later works featuring him speaks to his popularity. He is an important character in most of Chrétien de Troyes' romances, functioning as a model of chivalry to whom the protagonist is compared and contrasted. His role in the unfinished Perceval, the Story of the Grail is so substantial that some commenters have wondered if his adventures were originally meant to form a separate book. However, Chrétien's title hero usually proves morally superior to Gawain, who follows the rules of courtliness and chivalry to the letter rather than to the spirit.

Gawain in French literature

A large number of romances in French appeared in the wake of Chrétien, and Gawain was portrayed in various ways. Sometimes he is the hero, sometimes he aids the hero, sometimes he is the subject of burlesque humor. In the Vulgate Cycle, he is depicted as a proud and worldly knight who demonstrates through failures the danger of neglecting the spirit for the futile gifts of the material world. On the Grail quest, his intentions are always the purest, but he is unable to use God's grace to see the error in his ways. Later, When his brothers Agravain and Mordred plot to destroy Lancelot and Guinevere by exposing their love affair, Gawain tries to stop them. When Guinevere is sentenced to burn at the stake and Arthur deploys his best knights to guard the execution, Gawain nobly refuses to take part in the evil deed even though his brothers will be there. But when Lancelot returns to rescue Guinevere, a battle between Lancelot's and Arthur's knights ensues and Gawain's brothers (except for Mordred) are killed. This turns his friendship with Lancelot into hatred, and his desire for vengeance causes him to draw Arthur into a war with Lancelot in France. In the king's absence, Mordred usurps the throne. The Britons must return to save Britain, and Gawain is mortally wounded in valiant battle against Mordred's forces. In a letter to Lancelot the dying Gawain apologizes for his actions and asks that Lancelot come to Britain to help defeat Mordred.

In the Prose Tristan and the Post-Vulgate Cycle Gawain is a villain and a murderer. This depiction was not popular in subsequent literature, however, as this type of generic evil doesn't make for a very good hero or foil for a hero, or indeed even an interesting villain. For the most part Gawain remained an honorable if flawed champion.

Gawain in English literature

For the English and Scottish, Gawain remained a respectable and heroic figure. He is the subject of several romances and lyrics in the dialects of those countries, and his reputation remained untarnished perhaps through a reluctance to follow the French in portraying a British knight negatively. He is the hero of one of the greatest works of Middle English literature, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, where he is portrayed as an excellent, but human, knight; other important English Gawain romances include The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle and The Awntyrs off Arthure (The Adventures of Arthur).

These glowing portraits of Gawain all but ended with Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur, which is based mainly (but not exclusively) on French works from the Vulgate and Post-Vulgate Cycles. Here Gawain retains the negative characteristics attributed to him by the French, and the popularity of Malory's work ensured that most post-medieval English-language writing would retain those characteristics. The Child ballads include a preserved legend in the positive light, The Marriage of Sir Gawain telling (albeit in fragmented form) the story of his marriage to the loathly lady, and recently, many writers have returned to the old English and Welsh sources and found a much more heroic Gawain. The character appears in a positive light in novels like Gillian Bradshaw's Hawk of May, Thomas Berger's Arthur Rex, and Stephen R. Lawhead's Pendragon Cycle.

References

Norris J. Lacy (editor) The New Arthurian Encyclopedia Garland: New York, 1991. ISBN 0-8240-4377-4

External links

Gawain page at the Camelot Project