14 - A Note on the Percy Folio Grene Knight

Summary

This note attempts to defend the Grene Knight from the charge that it is no more than a wretched version of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

For a long time the Grene Knight in the Percy Folio manuscript did not excite much critical interest. The general view was that it is (a) of poor literary quality, and (and partly because) (b) it was simply derived from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight – of which ‘it appears to be a condensed version … with none of the literary distinction that marks its model’, ‘evidently a debased and contaminated version of Gawain itself’, etc. Recently, it has received more sympathetic treatment in the good editions of Diane Speed and Thomas Hahn, and in a perceptive short study by Gillian Rogers. It presents a number of difficulties and problems. This note will attempt to address some of these, even though in many cases it has to be admitted that a definite answer is not possible. It would be more than rash to attempt to claim that it can compete with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in terms of literary distinction, but there are a number of points that might be made in its defence. It is unfortunate, if not exactly unfair, that it is usually judged against its distinguished ‘model’. It deserves at least to be considered in its own right. And considered as a poem meant to be listened to, in performance, rather than read and scrutinized on the page.