Green Knight

The two sources present the Green Knight with no overlap in narrative or characterization, raising the question of whether the shared name carries any continuity.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the figure's otherness is total. He was "green all over" despite riding "even as a knight" (Part I, The coming of the Green Knight), clad in green silk with gold embroidery of "birds and insects in gay gauds of green and gold" (Part I, The fashion of the knight). His hair fell to his shoulders and "on his breast hung a beard, as thick and green as a bush" (Part I, Of the knight's steed). Even his horse was green, its mane "crisped and plaited with many a knot folded in with gold thread" and its tail "bound about with a band of bright green set with many a precious stone" with "bells of burnished gold" (Part I, Of the knight's steed). Yet he bore "no helm nor hauberk, neither gorget nor breast-plate, neither shaft nor buckler" -- only a holly-bough in one hand and "an axe, huge and uncomely" in the other, its head "an ell-yard long, the metal all of green steel and gold" (Part I, The arming of the knight). The holly-bough signalled peace, for he said "Ye may be sure by the branch that I bear here that I come in peace, seeking no strife" (Part I, Of the knight's challenge).

The beheading game structures the entire poem. The Green Knight proposed "a Christmas jest" -- whoever strikes him may keep the axe, but must seek him in a year for a return blow (Part I, Of the knight's challenge). When no one responded, he mocked the court: "on the benches are but beardless children" and "the praise and the renown of the Round Table overthrown by one man's speech" (Part I, Of the knight's challenge; The silence of the knights). After Gawain struck off his head, the knight "neither faltered nor fell; he started forward with out-stretched hand, and caught the head, and lifted it up," mounted his horse headless, and the severed head "lifted up the eye-lids and looked upon them, and spake" (Part I, The marvel of the Green Knight). He declared himself "the knight of the Green Chapel" and galloped out "so that the sparks flew from beneath his horse's hoofs" (Part I, The marvel of the Green Knight).

The revelation scene at the Green Chapel completes the test. The Green Knight's three blows at Gawain correspond precisely to the three nights of the exchange-of-winnings covenant. The first two were feints: "menaced thee with a feigned one, and hurt thee not" because Gawain kept the covenant truly on those nights (Part IV, Of the three covenants). The third drew blood because Gawain kept the green girdle. Yet the Green Knight pronounced Gawain "the most faultless knight that ever trode earth. As a pearl among white peas is of more worth than they" (Part IV, Of the three covenants), blaming him only "a little" because "thou lovedst thy life" (Part IV, Of the three covenants). He revealed that his wife's wooing was "mine own doing" (Part IV, Of the three covenants).

In Le Morte d'Arthur, the Green Knight is brother to the Black Knight, a conventional fighter who mourns his sibling's death at Beaumains' hands. He "rode unto an horn that was green, and it hung upon a thorn, and there he blew three deadly motes, and there came two damosels and armed him lightly" (Book VII, Chapter VIII). After defeat, he "kneeled down, and did him homage with his sword" (Book VII, Chapter VIII). He then hosted Beaumains and the damosel, posting "thirty knights privily to watch Beaumains, for to keep him from all treason" (Book VII, Chapter IX), and declared him "a full noble knight" whose match he had never met (Book VII, Chapter IX).