Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Manuscript, Date, and Author Analysis

The Gawain-Poet and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

1. The Manuscript

Sir Gawain is extant in a single manuscript: British Library, Cotton Nero A.x., fols. 91a–124b. In the manuscript, Sir Gawain is preceded by three other works titled by modern scholarship Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience. This vellum manuscript has been regarded as a copy, due mainly to the occurrence of scribal errors.

About the manuscript provenance, we know that the antiquary Sir Robert Cotton acquired it at the death of Henry Savile of Bank (1568–1617), and that it survived the fire that devastated the Cottonian collection in 1731.

This is more or less all the factual information that we have. Additionally, Sir Gawain provides internal information that points to the north-west Midlands as the place of composition.

First, there is a topographical description (lines 691–702) that requires a great degree of familiarity with Wirral and North Wales.

Second, there is linguistic evidence that corroborates this, with many northerly features present in the text.

2. Date

The manuscript itself provides the evident terminus ante quem, and it has been dated on stylistic grounds around 1400. The terminus post quem has been inferred from the descriptions of the Dead Sea in Cleanness, which are thought to have been inspired by the Insular Version of the Mandeville’s Travels, which circulated in England before 1390.

3. Author

The conjectural identification of authorship can offer only a socio-literary profile. The four poems feature in common:

• Dialect
• Themes
• Concepts
• Attitudes
• Vocabulary
• Stylistic characteristics

This conformity, however, is not conclusive in establishing a common author for the four texts. The single anonymous authorship has been conventionally accepted, but we can wonder if such unanimity would have been reached had the four texts not been preserved in the same codex. Owing to the lack of biographical material, modern critics have had to rely on textual evidence to construe the poet’s identity.

Also, the poet’s clerical status has been adduced because of his extensive literary readings, and he must have lived in a noble household because of his familiarity with courtly behavior. Besides, there is a possibility that he lived in London during his period of literary production and that he was close to the court of Richard II. Thus, this presence in London can help us explain his acquaintance with writers that would be unobtainable in the Midlands, especially Boccaccio and Dante.

Furthermore, the Gawain-poet also had access to more widely disseminated works, both in French and in Latin. Worth mentioning is his familiarity with French Arthurian romance and with the Latin Vulgate.

To sum up, this is a poet with a very solid biblical education, who was also well-read in other contemporary authors, and who conducted his literary activity in a provincial household but with access to the metropolis.