Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
The late fourteenth century masterpiece of Middle English romance. Its author, called the Pearl poet, has never been identified.
- Original byline
- Anonymous
- Published
- Date not recorded
- Form
- Other works
- Authorship
- Still unknown
- Reason for anonymity
- Unrecorded
- Copyright
- Public domain
- Reference
- Wikipedia · Wikidata
The authorship story
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight survives in a single manuscript alongside Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness, four poems in a northwest Midlands dialect that scholarship credits to one unidentified master, called the Pearl poet or Gawain poet. The romance of the beheading game and the exchanged winnings is among the finest things in Middle English, the equal of Chaucer from a poet about whom nothing is known. Candidates have been proposed and none accepted; the label 'Pearl poet' names the mystery, not a person. This site accordingly records the work's authorship as unknown, with the shared-author theory noted as the scholarly frame.
Questions readers ask
Who wrote Sir Gawain and the Green Knight?
Nobody knows. No author for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has been identified in the documented record.
Can I read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight for free?
Yes. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is in the public domain and the full text is free to read at Project Gutenberg.
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