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ANY WORK OF ART CAN BE VIEWED not only as an expression of the genius of its creator but also as representative of the spirit of its time. Each society, in its literature, its paintings, its rituals, recreates and retells its myths, those central thematic threads which ultimately shape the world view and experience of its members. Its heroes express its hopes, ideals and conflicts; the hero's acts become reaffirmations of the principles guiding the culture and the retelling serves to inculcate more firmly the society's values and beliefs. For these reasons, the narrative content and the symbolism of a work of literature must be viewed through the eyes of the people who lived at the time of its authorship; it is in this way that the current reader may more fully realize the concerns, intellectual and spiritual, which manifest themselves in the work and make it of a piece with its own time.
The author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is unknown but is believed to have been a member of the aristocracy living in England in the Fourteenth Century. As a Romance of the late Medieval period, the story utilizes common themes found in contemporaneous and earlier works: knights are bold, challenges are made, contests take place and acts of chivalry are displayed. Indeed, the work can be read and enjoyed just simply on that level, as a good yarn about Round Table characters, an adventure story containing elements of farce, suspense and daring. What makes it more than that, however, is that it captures in its story and Gawain's trials aspects fundamental to Medieval man's vision of his world and his existence.
What can be said, briefly, which describes the spirit of this time so removed from our own? Actually, a good deal can be by recalling