Group A Post 10/21

I read The Green Knight in a Medieval lit class last year. Seeing things from the perspective of sports in ancient Greece changes how I see this story a lot. I thought this was just a about King Arthur's men going on quests, but it actually seems to have a lot of origins in Greek and Roman contest. On one hand, Gawain’s challenge is for Arthur’s entertainment, which I didn’t notice before. On the other hand, the games are similar to the fight in Theocritus. It's both a physical contest and a mental contest of mindfulness. Gawain is essentially competing for glory that comes from winning and being a noble competitor. It’s a lot easier to see now that the game the Green Knight proposes is actually an athletic competition. It wouldn’t be surprising if the author of this story was relying on Greek and Roman literature, especially since the author mentions the Trojan war, Aneas, and Rome.

The major difference with The Green Knight is that there is Christianity. In Fitt 2, the author mentions that Gawain prays to God frequently, and believes he is doing this out of knightly duty. In Pindar, though, the Gods are praised, but the athletes are competing for more personal reasons. They pray to the Gods, but there is less emphasis on morals; whereas Gawain is devoted to the five sets of five (Fitt 2). This is similar to the situation in class when we compared Pindar to the Biblical texts. The biblical texts used allusions and metaphors for sports, but everything ultimately led to God and heaven,

Several similarities with the books we read include strangers coming to a court (like Odysseus), challenging ones’ athleticism (Seareach), emphasis on the physique of Gawain and the Green Knight, and proving ones self.

Comments

  1. Kate McNultyOctober 21, 2018 at 7:19 PM

    I also noticed the Greek undertones but did not notice the similarity to Odysseus arriving to a court of strangers. Also, your perspective on the differences of how they prayed through Christianity was interesting because one is for their own personal benefit athletically and the other is a duty. Even though the Greek gods and Christian god are different, they both play a somewhat similar role.

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  2. Jordan SilversmithOctober 21, 2018 at 7:52 PM

    Previously I had not considered the role that religion played in the Green Knight, only in the Greek readings where it is directly utilized in the stories. The role that religion plays in each time and location is very similar, as members of each religion attribute their athletic success to the gods. This makes me wonder which cultures attribute success to the athletes themselves.

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  3. UnknownOctober 28, 2018 at 5:26 PM

    I find it very interesting how your views of the story changed after reading the Green Knight with a focus on athletics. After thinking about myself, I see how one can think that the story has nothing to do with athletics, but since we are in a Sports Literature class, we view it in a different light. This whole concept of there being different perspectives on the same piece of literature is fascinating. When you think back on every book you've read, someone somewhere else could have viewed the same piece in a completely different way.

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