Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Rethinking Romance

Download or read book Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Rethinking Romance written by Markus Widmer and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2007-06 with total page 61 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 1999 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1 (A), University of Zurich (English Seminar), course: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, 16 entries in the bibliography, language: English, abstract: This paper discusses how the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight uses, explores and sometimes undermines the conventions of the Arthurian romance genre. As a basis for this investigation, a definition of the genre is sketched, using a structuralist model along with a set of typical motifs found in many romances. Having established the essential genre elements the papier then examines the way the Gawain-poet makes use of these in his text. After identifying the fundamentally generic structure of the poem the author concentrates on incidents where the poet plays ironically with the reader's genre expectations.