In Our Time: Culture - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Download Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the jewels of medieval English poetry. It was written c1400 by an unknown poet and then was left hidden in private collections until the C19th when it emerged. It tells the story of a giant green knight who disrupts Christmas at Camelot, daring Gawain to cut off his head with an axe if he can do the same to Gawain the following year. Much to the surprise of Arthur's court, who were kicking the green head around, the decapitated body reaches for his head and rides off, leaving Gawain to face his promise and his apparently inevitable death the following Christmas.

The illustration above is ©British Library Board Cotton MS Nero A.x, article 3, ff.94v95

With

Laura Ashe
Professor of English Literature at Worcester College, University of Oxford

Ad Putter
Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Bristol

And

Simon Armitage
Poet and Professor of Poetry at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Published on Thursday, 13th December 2018.

Available Podcasts from In Our Time: Culture

Subscribe to In Our Time: Culture

We are not the BBC, we only list available podcasts. To find out more about the programme including episodes available on BBC iPlayer, go to the In Our Time: Culture webpage.