Christian sermon as a plot-forming motif of medieval chivalric poem “Sir Gawain and the green knight”

The article studies chivalric poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” written by an unknown author in the Northwest dialect of middle English around 1330- 1400 as an example of secular Roman Catholic medieval homiletics. The aim of the paper is to analyse Christian homiletic features of the poem. Based on the analysis of “Sir Gawain” within the author’s hypothesis, it is shewn that the poem can be presented as a space of confrontation between Christian (King Arthur, Sir Gawain, the knights of the Round Table) and pagan (the Green Knight, Morgan le Fay, Lady Bertilak) forces. It is demonstrated that the religious meanings of the poem are closely related to gender meanings: men are considered Christians while female power is attributed the pagan colour. The Christian meanings of “Sir Gawain” are not overt, they cannot be read in the text at once, but they are in some way disguised, hidden in the depth of the text in the form of symbols, riddles, connotative semiotic constructions related to the theme of gender conflict. Within the concept proposed, the main semantic space of the poem is represented by the psychological duel between Sir Gawain and Lady Bertilak. It can be interpreted as the materialisation of the dark occult forces uprising for a battle with the Christian world. The paper compares the internal and external understanding of Sir Gawain’s sin from the point of view of Christian psychology. It is shewn that the subjective perception of Sir Gawain’s infamous deed is much more serious than the interpretation from the point of view of the general Roman Catholic approach “the sin made - the penitence brought”. In Gawain’s own opinion, he learned to believe in magic, paganism and witchcraft precisely starting with his committed sin. It is concluded that the study of the Roman Catholic homiletics as a plot-forming principle of “Sir Gawain” may possess an heuristic value and can serve as a means of discovering Christian meanings in other samples of courtly medieval literature.