Gawain Sentence Examples

In the later Historia of Goeffrey of Monmouth, and its French translation by Wace, Gawain plays an important and "pseudo-historic" role.

Finally, his relations with Guenevere are revealed to Arthur by the sons of King Lot, Gawain, however, taking no part in the disclosure.

As the sentence is about to be carried into execution Lancelot and his kinsmen come to her rescue, but in the fight that ensues many of Arthur's knights, including three of Gawain's brothers, are slain.

Thus converted into an enemy, Gawain urges his uncle to make war on Lancelot, and there follows a desperate struggle between Arthur and the race of Ban.

Gawain (Welwain, Welsh Gwalchmai), Arthur's nephew, who in medieval romance remains the type of knightly courage and chivalry, until his character is degraded in order to exalt that of Lancelot.

On receipt of the tidings of Mordred's treachery, Gawain accompanies Arthur to England, and is slain in the battle which ensues on their landing.

The anonymous author of the Chevalier a l'epee indeed makes this apparent neglect of Gawain a ground of reproach against Chretien.

At the same time the majority of the short episodic poems connected with the cycle have Gawain for their hero.

Most unfortunately our English version of the romances, Malory's Morte Arthur, being derived from these later forms (though his treatment of Gawain is by no means uniformly consistent), this unfavourable aspect is that under which the hero has become known to the modern reader.

Morris, in The Defence of Guinevere, speaks of "gloomy Gawain"; perhaps the most absurdly misleading epithet which could possibly have been applied to the "gay, gratious, and gude" knight of early English tradition.

He was certainly known in Italy at a very early date; Professor Rajna has found the names of Arthur and Gawain in charters of the early 12th century, the bearers of those names being then grown to manhood; and Gawain is figured in the architrave of the north doorway of Modena cathedral, a 12thcentury building.

Recent discoveries have made it practically certain that there existed, prior to the extant romances, a collection of short episodic poems, devoted to the glorification of Arthur's famous nephew and his immediate kin (his brother Ghaeris, or Gareth, and his son Guinglain), the authorship of which was attributed to a Welshman, Bleheris; fragments of this collection have been preserved to us alike in the first continuation of Chretien de Troyes Perceval, due to Wauchier de Denain, and in our vernacular Gawain poems. Among these "Bleheris" poems was one dealing with Gawain's adventures at the Grail castle,where the Grail is represented as non-Christian, and present s features strongly reminiscent of the ancient Nature mysteries.

There is good ground for believing that as Grail quester and winner, Gawain preceded alike Perceval and Galahad, and that the solution of the mysterious Grail problem is to be sought rather in the tales connected with the older hero than in those devoted to the glorification of the younger knights.

The explanation of the very perplexing changes which the character of Gawain has undergone appears to lie in a misunderstanding of the original sources of that character.

Nor was the lady of Gawain's love a mortal maiden, but the queen of the other-world.

It seems probable that it was this connexion which won for Gawain the title of the "Maidens' Knight," a title for which no satisfactory explanation is ever given.

When the source of the name was forgotten its meaning was not unnaturally misinterpreted, and gained for Gawain the reputation of a facile morality, which was exaggerated by the pious compilers of the later Grail romances into persistent and aggravated wrong-doing; at the same time it is to be noted that Gawain is never like Tristan and Lancelot, the hero of an illicit connexion maintained under circumstances of falsehood and treachery.

Gawain, however, belonged to the pre-Christian stage of Grail tradition, and it is not surprising that writers, bent on spiritual edification, found him somewhat of a stumbling-block.

Chaucer, when he spoke of Gawain coming "again out of faerie," spoke better than he knew; the home of that very gallant and courteous knight is indeed Fairy-land, and the true Gawain-tradition is informed with fairy glamour and grace.

As authority Thomas cites a certain Breri, who has now been identified with the Bleheris quoted as authority for the Grail and Gawain stories, and the Bledhericus referred to by Giraldus Cambrensis as famosus ille fabulator.

The Quest versions again fall into three distinct classes, differentiated by the personality of the hero who is respectively Gawain, Perceval or Galahad.

The most important and interesting group is that connected with Perceval, and he was regarded as the original Grail hero, Gawain being, as it were, his understudy.

Recent discoveries, however, point to a different conclusion, and indicate that the Gawain stories represent an early tradition, and that we must seek in them rather than in the Perceval versions for indications as to the ultimate origin of the Grail.

Gawain, included in the continuation to Chretien's Perceval by Wauchier de Denain, and attributed to Bleheris the Welshman, who is probably identical with the Bledhericus of Giraldus Cambrensis, and considerably earlier than Chretien de Troyes.

Another account is given in the prose Lancelot, but here Gawain has been deposed from his post as first hero of the court, and, as is to be expected from the treatment meted out to him in this romance, the visit ends in his complete discomfiture.

These are the Gawain versions.

Here the Grail, the chalice of the Last Supper, is at the same time, as in the Gawain stories, self-acting and food-supplying.

So far as Arthur himself is concerned these parallels are with the Fenian, or Ossianic, cycle, in the case of Gawain with the Ultonian.

The man who, so far as we know, first recounted the romantic adventures of Arthur's knights, Gawain.

This story too shows a primitive form in giving a full heroic stature to Sir Gawain.

Welsh tradition does not know him; early Italian records, which have preserved the names of Arthur and Gawain, have no reference to Lancelot; among the group of Arthurian knights figured on the architrave of the north doorway of Modena cathedral (a work of the 12th century) he finds no place; the real cause for his apparently sudden and triumphant rise to popularity is extremely difficult to determine.

Along with Kai and Bedwyr (Bedivere), Peredur (Perceval), Gwalchmai (Gawain), and many others, we have such figures as Sgilti Yscandroed, whose way through the wood lay along the tops of the trees, and whose tread was so light that no blade of grass bent beneath his weight; Sol, who could stand all day upon one leg; Sugyn the son of Sugnedydd, who was "broad-chested" to such a degree that he could suck up the sea on which were three hundred ships and leave nothing but dry land; Gweyyl, the son of Gwestad, who when he was sad would let one of his lips drop beneath his waist and turn up the other like a cap over his head; and Uchtry Varyf Draws, who spread his red untrimmed beard over the eight-and-forty rafters of Arthur's hall.

So Merlin preserves his diabolic origin; Arthur his mystic coming and his mystic passing; while Gawain, and after him Lancelot, journey across the river, as the Irish hero Bran had done before them to the island of fair women - the Celtic vision of the realm of death.

The English Arthurian poems regard him as the type and model of chivalrous courtesy, "the fine father of nurture," and as Professor Maynadier has well remarked, "previous to the appearance of Malory's compilation it was Gawain rather than Arthur, who was the typical English hero."

Whether or no Gawain was a sunhero, and he certainly possessed some of the features - we are constantly told how his strength waxed with the waxing of the sun till noontide, and then gradually decreased; he owned a steed known by a definite name le Gringalet; and a light-giving sword, Escalibur (which, as a rule, is represented as belonging to Gawain, not to Arthur) - all traits of a sun-hero - he certainly has much in common with the primitive Irish hero Cuchullin.

In Irish tradition the other-world is often represented as an island, inhabited by women only; and it is this "Isle of Maidens" that Gawain visits in Diu Crone; returning therefrom dowered with the gift of eternal youth.

To the student of the original texts Lancelot is an infinitely less interesting hero than Gawain, Perceval or Tristan, each of whom possesses a well-marked personality, and is the centre of what we may call individual adventures.