HKA-001673Literary Tradition
The Green Chapel in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
Archive record
The Green Chapel is the destination of Gawain’s winter journey in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Despite its name, the place is described in terms that have encouraged different interpretations of its landscape and meaning.
Proposed real-world identifications are interpretations rather than established facts. Within the poem, the Green Chapel marks the moment when a public promise made at Arthur’s court must be honoured in a strange and unsettling setting.
Record type: Literary tradition. Evidence: Middle English romance. Source trail: British Library, Cotton MS Nero A X; editions and translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.
Catalogue reference HKA-001673
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