Formal Complaint

It is somewhat aggravating to read an entire chapter about the symbolism of the color green in Gawain and the Green Knight only to come to these final sentences: "The pentangle is a symbol because the poet tells us so. As for green, who knows?"

If Derek Brewer, revered medievalist, doesn't know, nobody knows and nobody will ever know. By the same token, if Derek Brewer doesn't know, probably nobody ever knew, which means he is right, but I'm still annoyed.

This is nearly on par with what someone once wrote about a section of the Morte Darthur in which Malory tries to make some grand statements about love that apparently don't make sense. (I say apparently because the Morte Darthur is long and I never made it that far.) C. David Benson briefly discusses this in his essay, calling in another expert when it gets rough: "Roger Sherman Loomis, in a critical move that would solve many other literary cruxes, suggested that the author might have been drunk when he wrote it."

If I had known that options of saying "I have no idea" and "the poet was soused" were available to me as tools of critical analysis, my senior thesis would have been a lot easier.

However, Brewer's chapter did yield this instructive item: the color green is evidently suitable for the clothing of young married people, and parrots.

This post has been brought to you by the massive collection of criticism on the Arthurian legends that I own in spite of always having preferred, given a choice of mythical English heroes, Robin Hood. Who, so I hear, wore a lot of green. Did you ever notice that Douglas Fairbanks had unusually long arms? The author may be drunk.