The Reproachful Head of The Green Knight

My fine art PhD title is The High Wasteland: Scar, Form & Monstrosity in the English Landscape. My research, which comprises both theory and art practice, is concerned with the relationships between the subject, landscape and monstrosity with a view to explore and critique proto-fascistic notions of Englishness. For example, the false universal of the pastoral landscape tradition and the hierarchical image of an industrious and clearly stratified society.

In particular, I will present on one central theme of my research, sharing the made and thetic strategies I have used in relation to the medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (circa 1380 see Armitage, 2007) a 14th century chivalric romance concerned with the testing of the Arthurian knight Sir Gawain by the fantastical Green Knight. In particular an exploration of, and representation of the eponymous Green Knight.

In my research, this figure is accounted for as a monster with a particular relationship to landscape, explored utilising Mark Fisher’s (2016) concept of the ‘eerie’ and additionally ‘liminality’ drawing on Arnold Van Gennep (1960) and Victor Turner (1969). I consider the figure of the Green Knight as the agent of a natural and ‘liminal’ space; the green chapel, an ominous fissure in a remote landscape and the site of Gawain’s testing. This entity is one of the only figures vividly described in his physicality in the poem and yet remains elusive and indeterminate in his actions, motivations and his textual function (Besserman, 1986). Scholars have emphasised both demonic qualities (Krappe, 1938; McCarter in Mittman and Hensel, 2018) concerned with horror, violence and the uncanny; while others see in his actions a Christ-like function (see Halverson, 1969:138; Besserman, 1986:220 for discussion) in line with Christian notions of fall, redemption and transfiguration; still others have highlighted the pagan qualities of this figure as a kind of returned vegetation god (Keetley and Tenga, 2016) due to his regenerative qualities. The fact that these interpretations are possible attests to the indeterminate nature of the figure and I deny none of these. However, in my thesis, I propose that ‘deep time’ (McPhee, 1981) and temporality ‘duration’ (Bergson, 1911) are key features of the Green Knight who as an agent of nature actualises the radical potential of being in time, to change.

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