Britian and its beginnings at Troy:
Aeneas, great-grandfather of Brutus (according to the Gawain poet)
'tricherie'
'werre and wrake and wonder'
'both blysse and blunder'
The colour green:
'livree de mai' : dress during may jaunt
in the Les Tres Riches Heure, a Book of Hours owned by Jean, Duc de Berry
'why the devil wears green' by D.W. Robertson: because he wants to blend in with the trees. ok, i'm not kidding, it's what the article says. because he lies in wait like a hunter for an innocent and unsuspecting deer, he would not wear flourescent orange, thus he blends in with the foliage to lay a trap. why the Green Knight holds connotations of evil.
The 'holyn bobbe' and him being 'scholes' are signs of peace
The axe an instrument of war: 'hoge and mete' (huge and monstrous)
'spetos sparthe' (cruel battle-axe)
but it is also 'bigraven with grene in gracios werkes', with 'tryed tasseles', described right down to the green 'botouns' 'ful ryche'!
He is an 'arghlich mayster', a monstrous lord; 'half etayn' and half 'mon'
Righto. The 'endeles knot' of the pentangle next.
Symbolise fraunchyse, felawschyp, clannes, cortaysye, pite. Translated: generosity/free, comradeship, purity, courtesy, mercy.
Gawain is the 'gentylest knight of lote' and 'voyded of uche vylany', as 'golde pured'
The above virtues are the fyft fyve
1. five fingers
2. five senses
3. five wounds of Christ
4. five joys of Mary
5. five virtues
thus 5 x 5 is the perfect no. (and i'm thinking why not 7x7)
well. that's cos: it appears in Dante's Convivio, a discussion of human excellence. In it the human body has four lower kinds of vital activity belonging to both man and animal, and the last seperates the two: reason. So agrees St. Thomas Aquinas and the Fr. T. This symbolises natural perfection, not supernatural; the latter is only attained by divine grace.
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