Although it could be argued that chivalry and courtesy are essentially aspects of the same code of restraint and responsibility, the romance of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight presents a distinction between the domestic test of Gawain's chastity and the fantastic challenge of his bravery and mental determination. Gawain's virtues, symbolized by the "endele knot" of the pentangle of his shield, are deeply and religiously linked, meaning that his very chivalry, in his attempt to achieve personal spiritual salvation through earthly and social struggle, can be threatened by one of its members. the virtues are put to the test. In contrast, the shorter, simpler, older romance of Sir Orfeo has much less psychological or symbolic depth and entirely inexplicit narrative causality; the action being motivated very little by the decisions of the characters and more by the capricious and inexplicable intervention of the fairies. Although Gawain is an exemplar of chivalric virtues, he also has human flaws and arguably insufficient religious sensitivity, while Sir Orfeo appears to be a victim of larger, uncontrollable circumstances and to delight in an unequivocally complementary presentation. Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essay Throughout literature, knights have served as models for traditional chivalric attributes such as bravery, strength, pride and avarice, and this is characteristic of the genre that these must be clearly demarcated and identifiable. The romantic fantasy landscape in which the knights live allows them to take on simple moral challenges and face allegorical confrontations in which the didactic subtext is only thinly veiled. When, at the end of the poem, Gawain declares "it is the sign of the truth that I am tan inne" (L 2509), he has a retrospective vision of his sin and can isolate the moral failure, both for others knights than for other knights. the reader. In his book Chivalry, Maurice Keen suggests that "an ideal of chivalry emerging from what so often appears to be essentially escapist literature is hardly a promising model for a social historian to exploit", indicating that even if the The knight's misfortunes are described in detail, there is always a seductive and superficial simplicity to the adventure. In fact, one might even infer that the relationship between chivalric romances and the authentic deeds of knights was symbiotic, for just as knights might aspire to emulate their literary heroes, writers drew inspiration from the exploits of certain knights for their work . . Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is particularly powerful in its demonstration of the corruptibility of man, a particularly important theme in the fourth "crisis" and in the broader themes of Marian devotion. The relatively greater religious intensity of Gawain and the Green Knight compared to Sir Orfeo allows for a more intense drama of principles in which the hero finds himself declaring that "my can right his wrong, but he can strike" (L 2511) . The syllabic balance of the line contributes to its aphoristic sense of definite authority and, indirectly, to the concluding tone of the final stanza. When Gawain stays at Bertilak Castle, it is courtly loyalty to his host that prevents him from sleeping with Bertilak's wife, while his firm resolve to face death without fear stems from a distinctly different article of the code chivalrous; the common point being an inviolable sense of responsibility, of truthand loyalty. Gawain's character is superficially consistent, like the "[l]arge & courtesys" Orfeo, but where Sir Orfeo seems to provide advice on how to deal with bad luck, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight seem to face the the corrupting emergence of vice from within oneself. Gawain's self-preserving act of deception in accepting the gift of the green belt is a practical response to life-threatening circumstances, but we also witness his repeated attempts to avoid the gifts or the seduction of Bertilak's wife. His fault is clear, but it is also an error that is amplified by the seriousness with which Gawain regards his chivalrous responsibility to be courteous. Although many knights like Gawain are attractive characters and social role models, one often gets the feeling that his life is not one of adventurous freedom, but painful restraint, combined with insufficient self-awareness. For example, right after “he surely sang a hymn” (L 1880), Gawain goes and “sang as mery a hymn…as ever he did that day.” (L1883) Gawain's reputation pursues him, for example when Bertilak's wife says: "si cortayse, si knyçtyly, que çe ar knowen oute" (L1511) and his achievements are proven by his very presence at the Arthur's high table. . Despite his fame and physical fitness, Gawain remains passive for much of the poem and his ideals become the subject of the Green Knight's mockery and scorn. This image of the otherwise perfect knight with a crippling flaw is clear in characters like Lancelot of Malory's Lake, but curiously absent from his Galahad and Sir Orfeo. Although it could easily be argued that the flaws of the imperfect knight are the subject of the romance, Alan Markman is happy to assert of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight "that the main purpose of the poem is to show how Gawain is a splendid man." ". This statement is confusing because the poem not only explores many issues with very similar degrees of emphasis, but one of them is Gawain's deviation from the courtly code. To explain the apparent contradiction between transgression and perfection, after an explanation of the incident with the belt, Markman will later say: "[all the more human for this slight defect, Gawain is a sympathetic man", which seems difficult to reconcile with his model. virtues and moral perfection Should we infer that a knight who never went to war and who gave himself up sexually would be even more perfect because he would be even more human The conflict between? the knight's exemplary qualities and meticulous demonstration of his fault is extraordinarily more complex and calls for a much wider range of responses than Markman supposes. In discussing the validity of the titular assertion, it is imperative to recognize that the presence. of the word "although" indicates a simultaneous acceptance of the role of courtesy and chivalry as ideals, and of the penitential element in the poems. Characteristics of the romantic genre are presented not in a state of mutual exclusivity, but as surprisingly coexisting properties. However, the word “penitential” can itself be ambiguous. The novels might be penitential as an extension of their didactic function, in the sense that they inspire penitence by demonstrating a properly remorseful response to transgression. Alternatively, the novels could be understood as penitential due to a greater focus on the subject of penitence than on the instructive presentation of chivalric or knightly virtue. The symbolic pentangle on Gawain's shield appears to have a moral messagemanifest, but as Maurice Keen observes, "[v]irtue is a characteristic of the inner man, of the spirit or soul: external marks, such as that heraldic symbols take into account something other than the external manifestation of virtue, in life and action” (p. 163). . If Keen is correct and virtue describes an inner ethic of ontology, then it must somehow be linked to inner religious purity and a prescriptive exploration of the "virtue of penance" follows quickly. On the other hand, penance is an important element of Gawain and the Green Knight, with some critics observing that the conversation between the Green Knight and Gawain at the Green Chapel takes the form of a confession. "Confession scenes in Gawain and the Green Knight", asserts John Burrow, "[t]his scene clearly, if informally, follows the model of the confessional, with Gawain again the penitent and the Green Knight playing the role of the confessor" . Burrow also describes the parallelism between the Green Chapel scene and Gawain's confession at Bertilak Castle in which Gawain "makes no restitution". ... returning the girdle, nor resolves to sin no more." In each case, confession means that Gawain made a mistake and did not achieve his supposed perfection. It could even be argued that in confessing, Gawain is renouncing his ties to the physical world and recognizing the importance of the divine and the transcendent in the task that awaits him, the Green Knight even says to Gawain in the chapel "I know your pods well, and your costes als" (L 2360) en. The word "costes" can mean "manners", but also manners or courteous behavior, which highlights the social nature of Gawain's failure. His only failure in martial conduct is that he “has schranke a lytel with the schulders for the scharp yrne” (L. 2267) and this chivalrous gap is compensated by a true confession which concludes “I schunk onez, and so I will do it no more” (L 2280 ) showing real determination Penitence is an important theme, but as the confession scenes and their causality show, it is almost indistinguishable from any didactic representation of positive character traits. In analyzing chivalry and courtesy in Sir Orfeo, it must be recognized that a modern understanding of what chivalry meant to knights in the 14th century is partly deduced from Romanesque literature. Maurice Keen argues that "the novels do indeed help, in an obvious way, to define the elusive ethical implications of chivalry...we find Romantic authors habitually associating certain qualities." The poet Gawain was clearly aware of an established tradition of chivalric virtues, but he manipulates expectations, as when Gawain, in attempting to strike the Green Knight instead of the king, finds a conflict between the need to be loyal to his king and that of defending the honor of his chivalrous order. He begins "[w]olde çe, worthylych lorde....ask me to drink on this bench, and stone you there, / that I should vylanye my voyde this table, / and that my legge lady he didn't love her" (L 343), which clearly demonstrates his conscious honor and suppressed enthusiasm. The politeness of his speech recognizes all the usual courtly conventions but, when delivered at such a time, it is clearly desperate. In Gawain and the Green Knight, the language and content immediately reveal that the play is a romance whereas in Sir Orfeo, the first paragraph of verse seems to explicitly say that the tale is romantic, "[when] kings put our y- here". / ani meruailes who were, thai gave a harp in gle & game / & made.