ABSTRACT
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight contains many words and terms that ask for more than a narrowly secular reading of the poem to account for them. Examples that come readily to mind include "cou ety se" (2374), "fau t" (2435), "tech es" (2436), "surquidre" (2457), and "surfet" (2433).1 These and other words possess strong theological valence, and they are as important to interpreting the poem as are words that derive from courtly or heroic or other codes. As part of a book in progress, "The Knot Why Every Tale is Told": Toward a Poetics o f the Knot in W estern L iterature from the Classics to the R enaissance , I am preparing a study of S ir Gawain and the Green Knight that focuses on the figure of the knot in the poem, its relation to the sim ilar figure in D ante's C om m ed ia , especially the P arad iso , and the importance of the figure to understanding the theological vocabulary of Sir G aw ain . The following remarks derive from this study-in-progress, and although necessarily they m ust abbreviate many of my findings to date, they still provide a reliable sketch of several crucial elements in the figure of the knot in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, especially the "syngne of surfet" and the surfeit of signs in the poem.2
