Reviews - Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

1.53k reviews for:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

On New Year, a Green Knight interrupts a feast happening at Arthur's roundtable, to offer a challenge. He challenges one knight to give a blow to his head, and within a year they should travel to his place of living to receive a strike in return. Sir Gawain, rises to this challenge and this chivalric romance recounts his journey to find the Green's Knights chapel, to receive his strike in return.

If I was not required to read this book for class, I feel that I would've put this book down at about 25%. I felt that the pacing of the poem was very quick at moments and often slow at some points to my liking. Before Gawain's journey to find the Green Knight, the pacing gets a little weird, where the orator or writer of the poem skips throughout the seasons, to come back a year later and then the story goes back to its original pacing around Christmastime.

Once Gawain's journey begins, I feel that the pacing becomes a bit slow, and there is a lot of emphasis on small details that contribute to the story but do not matter in the end, but simply add some sort of symbolic meaning. Although they are crucial to the symbolic meaning, I felt that the layer of detail that they were written in was not necessary, and still could have been understood in minimal detail. Due to adding those details, I felt that it became a chore to read this story.

Although there was a variety of unnecessary details, the underlying message of this romance was crucial to those hearing or reading this poem at the time, but could also be translated to current times. This poem may have been very long, and drawn out to me, but the underlying message still sits with me.

kenleybriggs's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous hopeful inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: No

gaby_mrc16's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous inspiring mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

stepriot's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous challenging emotional hopeful reflective medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: N/A

Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

jazztrombone's review against another edition

3.0

The introduction of this edition prepared me for the use of alliteration in this epic poem. Having never read anything like this before, I found it interesting to read putting an emphasis on the repeated consonants. I would imagine, like all art forms, that writing in this style is difficult to do well. It’s a fairly quick read and not difficult as I thought it might be, unless you pick up the original version from 1360 AD. Good luck with that! There is also an exceptionally brilliant movie adaptation made in 2021 by A24 Films. Definitely read story before seeing the movie (currently on Amazon Prime Video) so as not to spoil the ending.

Original text:
Siþen þe sege & þe assaut wat3 sesed at Troye,
Þe bor3 brittened & brent to bronde3 & aske3,
Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wro3t,
Wat3 tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe;