A giant green knight rides into Camelot at Christmas and offers a game: strike off my head now, and in a year I return the blow. Gawain swings — and the knight picks up his head and laughs.
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Gawain is the most perfect Arthurian romance — a beheading game, a winter journey, a castle of temptations where the real test is honesty, and a green chapel waiting at the end. It is eerie, funny, and morally exquisite.
The poet's Middle English is a northern dialect thick with alliteration — gorgeous aloud, hard alone, and ideal glossed. The interlinear lets you hear the axe-swing rhythms while never losing the thread.
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