Time, Horror, and Iconoclasm: Creative Responses to SGGK

The original illustrations of SGGK have experienced intermittent academic reappraisal since their dismissal by Fredric Madden in his 1839 publication; this relates to their quality, meaning, and their potential multiple authorship. Those reappraisals stress the importance of the illustrations as not simply decorative, but as critical and interpretive. Prompted by those insights I have been interested in what can be learned from the images that accompany the poem, those of the original codex, but moreover those of subsequent translations.

In 2022 Middlesex University funded the website ‘Representing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight’ which brings together illustrations from translations of the poem for comparison, including criticism that demonstrates their importance; both as supporting the texts they accompany aesthetically, and in creating emphasis on certain themes from attitudes independent of the translator. The project also enlisted six contemporary artists, asking them to respond to the poem, with a view to extending the visual language and redressing the privation of attention paid to the text from the fine art canon. In addition, there is analysis of the recent film by David Lowery, its tone and symbolism, making the project a fulsome account of the SGGK visual lexicon.

In this paper I will explore the developing visual language, and its tensions around Gawain and what he embodies. I suggest that there is a growing emphasis on landscape features, that are used to represent different registers of temporality, and on horror motifs, both helping to bring the disturbing implications of the poem to modern audiences. The contemporary art responses develop these themes, grappling with subjectivity as it relates to power and status. I suggest two distinct categories—that speak to the legacy of the poem—become apparent, treating Gawain as either a site of development and becoming, or as a construct in need of demolition.

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