God and the Gawain-Poet

This study argues that Pearl, Patience, Cleanness and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are much more closely related to each other than has been previously thought, united by a single theological purpose worked out in four different ways. The distinctive form of each of the poems is not just a receptacle for the subject but a necessary function of its message. Each poem expresses an acknowledgment of absolute indebtedness to God for creation and a consciousness of itself as text, inhabiting its genre in a way that deliberately calls attention to the acts of both writer and listener. Between these two acts arise moral questions about the expectations and assumptions aroused by the genre. In eliciting this literary selfconsciousness, the poet celebrates human craftsmanship while examining its motives and achievements in the light of the divine artistry. The Gawain-poet has frequently been understood as displaying an ironically elitist detachment from the people he writes about; the author here argues, conversely, that the irony and self-reference are evidence of the poet's deeply serious and affectionate engagement with the circumstances and culture of his society. On this reading, the poems offer an interpretation of the poet's attitude as entirely humane as well as fiercely theological.