ABSTRACT
Marie Borroff It is a commonplace of the criticism of Sir G aw ain and the
Green Knight that the drama acted out at the Green Chapel both ought and ought not to be read as a confessional scene. John Burrow, tracing out the analogy betw een what he calls the "pretend, secular confession" made by the hero and "a real, sacramental one," finds that the m ock-confession "ends, as it should," with a mock-absolution:
I halde \>e polysed of ^at ply3 t [Bertilak says], and pured as clene
As \>ou hade3 neuer forfeted sy \>en \>ou wat3 fyrst borne. [2393-94]1
[I hold you polished as a pearl, as pure and as bright As you had lived free of fault since first you were bom.]
Elsewhere in late fourteenth-century English poetry, some of the same words are spoken by another confessor the validity of whose role is subject to question:
I yow assoile by myn heigh power, Yow that wol offre, as clene and eek as cleer As ye were bom .2
