Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was required reading for literature undergraduates 40 years ago, and it has stayed with me ever since, though nowadays I seldom return to the original Middle English. That's laziness, and it deprives me of some of the best alliterative poetry in English. But what translations do give is the story, which has everything necessary for a good novel: a perfectly-formed plot, a protagonist with a tormented inner life, stirring action with neatly counter-pointed violence and sex, startling metaphors and superb natural description. Gawain's winter journey and the hunting sequences in the snow-bound forest remind us that nature, in the 14th century, was not the object of nostalgic quest, but simply the world as it was: beautiful, dangerous, uncomfortable and Other. The poem also carries a trailing weight of symbolism that you can drag as far as you like into the realms of Celtic myth and pagan pantheism. Green Men, fertility rituals, nature spirits and shamanic games have enjoyed a comeback since my dusty undergraduate days.
link: Book Of A Lifetime: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Reviews, Books - The Independent
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