Online course: Gawain: Ancient and Modern

Barry Wood

In the introduction to his translation of Sir Gawain & the Green Knight, Simon Armitage suggests that the poem is “oddly redolent of a contemporary predicament, namely our complex and delicate relationship with the natural world”. The poem was written–author unknown–in the late fourteenth century but unlike the Canterbury Tales or Piers Plowman it had scarcely any impact on subsequent poetry or even poetic history until the manuscript was printed in 1839. After that, interest developed among nineteenth-century scholars and the occasional poet; but it was not until the past hundred years that it began to attract the attention of such diverse writers like JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, Iris Murdoch, Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage.

The course will take Armitage’s version as the base text but will consider selected passages from the original and other modernisations as well as critical and cultural interpretations of the poem. We will explore the abiding fascination with the poem in relation to ideas of Englishness and cultural identity, the conflict between nature and civilisation and current environmental concerns.

DAY: Thursday        TIME: 10.30am – 12.30pm.
6 weeks, 8 October to 26 November 2020
(Half term break 29 October- 5 November)

Online platform:
The course will be delivered by email exchange with a complementary booklet.

Price Concessions Minimum No. Maximum No.
£55 n/a 8 18

Please send your MANCENT booking form with accompanying payment to the address below. If you prefer to pay through BACS, please contact the lecturer for further particulars.

Contact details:
Barry Wood, 12 St. Brannock’s Road,
Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Manchester M21 0UP
email: barrywood42@hotmail.com

Adult Education in Manchester and Cheshire