the lady which makes the wearer invulnerable. He gives the lord the kisses but
conceals the sash, receiving in exchange the skin of an old fox.
On New Year’s morning at the Green Chapel the Green Knight appears; he threat-
ens huge blows but gives Gawain a slight cut on the neck. Gawain exults. Then the
Green Knight reveals that he is the lord of the castle, and that he and his wife have
been testing Gawain. The cut on his neck is a token punishment for concealing the
sash: ‘for ye loved your life; the less I yow blame.’ Furious and ashamed, Gawain loses
his famous courtesy for a moment. He rides home to Camelot, wearing the sash; he
confesses his fault, blushing with shame. The court laughs with relief, declaring that
they will all wear the sash for Gawain’s sake: ‘For that was acorded the renoun of the
Rounde Table / And he honoured that hit had evermore after.’
Life and death thus depend upon integrity in private sexual and social conduct.
Gawain the impeccable breaks his word; it is a venial sin. Yet the Round Table adopt
the mark of their fellow’s fault as a mark of honour. At the end of the poem, another
hand has written HONY SOYT QUI MAL PENCE, a motto which suits the open-
endedness of the poem and resembles the motto of the Order of the Garter.Gawain
has gusto and wit: a poem which is itself a Christmas game, it celebrates chivalry
while asking how Christian it is.
John Gower
John Gower(?1330–1408) wrote his Mirour de l’Omme (‘Mirror of Mankind’), a
long didactic poem in French, in the 1370s. His Latin poem Vox Clamantis cries out
against the social evils of the day. His English Confessio Amantis (‘A Lover’s
Confession’) survives in fifty manuscripts and three versions, the last completed in
- A gentleman landowner in Suffolk and Kent, Gower was on terms of trust with
Chaucer, who submitted Tr oilus to him for correction. At the end of Gower’s
Confessio Amantis, Venus in turn says, ‘And gret wel Chaucer when ye mete / As mi
disciple and mi poete ....’ Caxton printed both poets, and the critic George
Puttenham in 1589 called them the first masters of the ‘art of English poesy’.
The Confessio is a narrative in dialogue form: Genius, a priest in the religion of
courtly love, hears the confession of Amans, ‘the Lover’. To examine the conscience
ofthe Lover, Genius takes him through the Seven Deadly Sins, giving examples of
each in its five aspects by telling cautionary tales from antiquity, often from Ovid.
Although a priest of Venus and of the benign goddess Nature (found also in
Chaucer’s Parlement of Fowls), Genius is also a true priest and eventually persuades
the aging Amans to give up love, however refined and refining, for a higher love and
wisdom. The Confessio,like all Ricardian poetry, addresses the role of Christianity in
a supposedly Christian world which remains imperfect.
Some of Gower’s tales are also told by Chaucer: his Wife of Bath tells Gower’s tale
ofthe Loathly Bride, and Chaucer’s Man of Law tells that of Gower’s Constance.
Another tale told by both is Ovid’s ‘Ceyx and Alcyone’. This is how Gower describes
the embraces of Alcyone, who has turned into a bird, the halcyon or kingfisher:
Hire wynges bothe abrod sche spradde,
And him, so as sche may suffise, as well as she could
Beclipte and keste in such a wise, embraced
As sche was whilom want to do: formerly
Hire wynges for hire armes tuo two
Sche tok, and for hire lippes softe
Hire harde bile, and so ful ofte billTHE FOURTEENTH CENTURY 55The Order of the Garter
Edward III in 1348 founded
the Order of the Garter, the
first European order of
chivalry, modelled on the
fellowship of knights of
Arthur’s Round Table. Its
members vow loyalty to their
lord and to defend the right.
Its motto is Honi soit qui mal
y pense: at a ball at Calais,
the King danced with the
young Countess of Salisbury;
when she dropped her garter
Edward bound it on his own
knee with the words: ‘Shame
on him who thinks evil of it.’
The words are on the Garter
worn as a device by the
twenty-four members of the
Order at St George’s Chapel,
Windsor. The Knights of the
Garter feasted at a Round
Table made in the 13th
century, still to be seen in
Winchester Castle.