Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Characters

The Testing of Sir GawainSir Gawain has a reputation as "the man to whom all excellence and valour belongs, / Whose refined manners are everywhere praised" (911-912). In other words, he’s both a...

Spoiler Alert! The Green Knight is the wild side of the eminently civilized Lord Bertilak. Yup, that’s right, they’re the same character, although we don’t find this out for sure until the en...

In our first encounter with Lady Bertilak, the narrator tells us that "she was the loveliest on earth in complexion and features, / In figure, in colouring and behaviour above all others, / And mor...

For a character who only shows up at the beginning and ending of the story, King Arthur sure gets a lot of time devoted to describing him. As soon as the Christmas feasting begins, we learn that Ar...

Like Arthur, the character Morgan le Fay gets relatively little face time in the poem, but gets a long description when she’s first introduced. Unlike Arthur, however, Morgan turns out to be the...