The Middle Ages were a time of great change for Britain, but more significantly, it was the time in which Britain itself began to emerge as a distinct nation to its people. The great epic poem that was Beowulf, had provided a strong foundation for the launch of a literary British identity with its brave, honorable, and loyal hero, but Beowulf was not actually British literature but Anglo-Saxon literature; the glorified past Beowulf was set in could not be used to confirm the glory a burgeoning Britain would want. Still, Beowulf was able to provide an interesting foundation for a literary identity that would manifest most boldly in The History of the Kings of Britain, written by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and then, perhaps more significantly, in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by the Pearl Poet.
Analysis
Around 100 years after the writing of Beowulf, the legend of King Arthur shot to popularity following Monmouth’s publishing of The History of the Kings of Britain, with Sir Gawain serving as proof of its cultural significance.
While Beowulf provided a heroic tale of a regional past, Monmouth provided an equally grand and heroic tale for a specifically British past. Monmouth included many of the themes that the earlier text did, only now claiming those as the foundations of an indisputable nation: Britain. The popularity of King Arthur today is still well known, but the texts that are pointed to when talking about the legendary king are usually Sir Thomas Mallory’s Morte d’Arthur and the chivalric-romance poem I will focus on, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, written around 200 years after Monmouth’s History of Kings.
Both Beowulf and Kings of Britain had a role to play in the inspiration of the search for a national identity, and with Sir Gawain, we see the same themes continued and further explored. In editor James Simpson’s preface to Sir Gawain, he writes: “Literature in English was both performed orally and written throughout the Middle Ages, but an awareness of and pride in a uniquely English literature did not actually exist before the late fourteenth century” (Simpson 4-5). While Beowulf and Kings of Britain don’t make Simpson’s “late fourteenth century” cut, Sir Gawain does, yet it is important to note that it very much stands on the shoulders of the previous two texts, especially Kings of Britain.
Sir Gawain begins by setting up its own history of Britain, opening: “Just as History of Kings does, Sir Gawain reinforces the validity of its kingdom through an established and grand history that glorifies the British people: “After Britain was built by this founding father / a bold race bred there, battle-happy men” (20-21). In Alan MacColl’s The Meaning of “Britain” in Medieval and Early Modern England” he states that History of Kings “purports to tell the history of Britain over a period of nearly two thousand years, from its foundation as a kingdom by the Trojan exile Brutus to the coming of the Saxons in the fifth and sixth centuries. The English quickly adopted Geoffrey’s account as the first part of their own national history” (MacColl 249).
Just as History of Kings does, Sir Gawain reinforces the validity of its kingdom through an established and grand history that glorifies the British people:
After Britain was built by this founding father / a bold race bred there, battle-happy men”
(Sir Gawain 20-21)
Sir Gawain relies heavily on its historicity and chivalry to establish the legendary aspect of its world and characters; in this way, Sir Gawain closely resembles its predecessors which seem to always look back at the past, but also create their own kind of knightly hero. But where does British identity come in exactly? Glorified history. Chivalric history.
Beowulf didn’t talk about a cool “British” history, but it was a cool literary part of British history that likened Britain to Ancient Greece and its epics. History of Kings did away with the literary excitement, but instead focused its efforts on creating a “real” hero for an Ancient Britain in his pseudo-historical text. Sir Gawain took a bit of both, maintaining the chivalrous hero of both, making him of the most honorable British heritage, and returning his literature to poetry.
In doing this, Sir Gawain continues to establish and lengthen an honorable literary British identity, something that appears to be pursued even in the late 16th century.
Works Cited
Armitage, Simon. “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages, by Stephen Greenblatt and James Simpson, W.W. Norton, 2018, pp. 201–256.
MacColl, Alan. “The Meaning of ‘Britain’ in Medieval and Early Modern England.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2006, pp. 248–269. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/499787.
Simpson, James. “The Middle Ages to Ca. 1485.” The Norton Anthology of English Literature: The Middle Ages, Norton, 2018, pp. 3–29.