A Shapeshifter's Guide to Identity (a post intended for Mr. Obama)

In defining for his audience “the subject of history…as the individual person forged in the dialectic between subjective and the social” (19), Lee Patterson mentions  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as “historical context that Chaucer’s explorations of the dialectic between an inward sense of selfhood—subjectivity—and the claims of the historical world should be placed” (11).  According to Patterson, Sir Gawain can provide this context because in Bertilak’s questioning of Gawain—“pou art not Gawayn”—“the poem asks, does the subjectivity [of the titular character]… accord with the identity established by Arthurian history?” (11). 

But does the poem actually question Gawain’s identity because of a fissure between selfhood and history?  While Bertilak does in fact say that “pou art not Gawayn,” he does not do so in the terms of Gawain’s historicity—either as existent within a historical period or as a historical figure who is discussed in later time periods. Instead Bertilak actually says:

You are not Gawain the glorious,” the green man said,

“That never fell back on the field in the face of the foe,

And now you flee for fear, and have felt no harm:

Such news of that knight I never heard yet!

I moved not a muscle when you made a strike,

Nor caviled at the cut in King Arthur’s house;

My head fell to my feet, yet steadfast stood,

And you, all unharmed, are wholly dismayed—(IV. 2270-2277).

For those with hazy memory of the poem, at the very beginning of the story, a scary Green Knight comes to King Arthur’s court at New Year’s and challenges someone to cut off his head, in return for that person’s head the next New Year. Gawain is the only person to volunteer. When the Green Knight (who in the poem’s middle transforms into Bertilak, the keeper of the inn where Gawain rests on his way to meet the Green Knight) rejects Gawain in this passage, he does not reject him outright as “Gawain” but as “Gawain the glorious.” He indicates that Gawain-the-glorious was courageous but that “you,” this current Gawain, shakes. The terms of being and not being Gawain-the-glorious, are defined based on the presence or absence of courage—not the presence or absence of a Gawain within the bounds of a particular time.

The Green Knight, who hereafter will be called Bertilak, questions this currently unglorious Gawain not because of Arthurian legend but because of “news”, or rumor. While both rumor and legend create reputations of identity, the latter acts a para-history, while the former gains its traction from its approximation to current time.   Bertilak’s comment that Gawain’s change in personality may be recorded in news “he has not yet heard,” opens the possibility that Gawain-the-glorious could be newly cowardly and that his difficulty in reconciling Gawain-the-glorious with Gawain-in-the-flesh comes from not being up-to-date—an admission that, albeit sarcastic, underscores Bertilak’s assessment of character through current events rather than on historical knowledge alone.

But Bertilak does not only rely on rumor; he also shores up first hand account. When he reminds Gawain of his own bravery in this passage, Bertilak reinforces the fact that even though this event occurred in the past, Gawain saw this event with his naked eye. Bertilak juxtaposes Gawain’s eyewitness experience with his current observation of Gawain who “all unharmed, are wholly dismayed.” The relation between the past and the present in Bertilak’s claim of Gawain’s identity does not rely on legend, but on shared, personal experience.

My reading has thus far emphasized the error in Patterson’s hasty assertion that Bertilak’s question highlights the “drama of identity at the center of the poem” (11).  As I have pointed out, Bertilak, who is an individual character and not a stand-in for the poem as a whole, does not account for Gawain’s identity based on Arthurian legend, but on contemporary report and first-hand memory.  Still, I recognize that Bertilak’s reliance on report and personal experience does not outright refute any claims of the importance of historicity or the past. In fact, by relying on current report, Bertilak infuses the poem with a sense of historicity, a sense that as a character, Bertilak inhabits some historical time—no matter how ambiguous. In addition, by referring to past events Bertilak, reminds Gawain how the past often serves as a standard by which to assess character and changes in self.  Still, it is hoped that my reading has shown that there is little link between one’s sense of historicity and experience of the past with the narratives that histories or legends provide. While outside the frame of the text the reader may have knowledge of a Gawain of Arthurian legend, Bertilak’s interrogation of Gawain remains mired in the character’s sense of time based on social participation and personal memory. More importantly, it is beyond rich and beyond ironic that any questions that may form “the drama of identity “ of a character in this poem come from another character who himself is shape shifter: a man with a various names and faces.