ABSTRACT
Although no warrior of Arthur’s host is more deserving of a full-length portrait than is Gawain, the present paper does no more than touch on certain facets of the subject. The writer’s original and innocent intention was to make a brief comment on the opening of Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale, a passage in which Gawain’s courtesy is thrown into bold relief. Gradually, however, it became evident that the concept of courtesy in Gawain called for more thorough documentation than it had hitherto received, and, closely connected with this, that a concise survey of Gawain’s reputation from Wace to Mr. T.H. White might well be attempted. Neither of these efforts breaks virgin ground, as any student of the literature of Arthurian romance knows perhaps too well, but the present accounts are, for better or worse, more comprehensive, if not more conclusive, than any earlier work.1 For evidence as to Gawain’s courtesy virtually the entire body of French and English poems2 dealing with Arthur and his knights has been drawn upon,3 and the prose romances have been sampled liberally, although it must be confessed that only those passages in the Vulgate versions were read, which, according to Sommer’s index, treated of Gawain. Many of these works, of course, throw light on Gawain’s general reputation and, in addition, representative modern writers, creative and critical, from Malory on have been examined. Gawain’s reputation can hardly be kept completely separate from his courtesy, a fact especially true with regard to his love affairs; in consequence some of his amours appear in one section and some in the other.
