The Lady’s Temptations in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
A record in The Hawthorn Archive, preserving folklore with its place, type and source context attached.
While the lord of the castle goes hunting, his wife visits Gawain and tests the boundaries of his courtesy. The exchanges take place across three days and are closely linked to the agreement that Gawain must exchange his winnings with his host.
The scenes are neither an independent folktale nor evidence of a historical court scandal. They form part of the poem’s tightly organised examination of truthfulness, reputation and the conflicting obligations of chivalric conduct.
The poet allows the reader to compare what Gawain says, what he accepts and what he later chooses to disclose. Evidence: medieval literary text. Source trail: British Library Cotton MS Nero A X; scholarly editions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.