Goddesses, saints and the magic pentangle in The green knight (2021)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7917.2023.e93053Keywords:
Feminism, Arturian Literature, Medieval Literature, SupernaturalAbstract
The medieval poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight had its film adaptation entitled The Green Knight released in 2021 under the direction of David Lowery with Dev Patel in the role of Gawain. Both the poem and the film feature a significant number of female characters who have some contact with the supernatural and who act as guides and test mediators in Gawain’s journey. This work intends to approach how these female characters were adapted for the feature film, thinking about how the conjunction with magic and the symbolism of the pentangle were used in order to relate such characters as architects of the adventure and consequently as divine representations of pagan legends that were syncretized with the Christian religious universe. The work also focuses on references from medieval literature to adaptations for modern cinema, discussing how, given the difficulty in adapting complex characters such as Morgan le Fay and symbols such as the pentangle, the director used strategic representations so that modern audiences had a better understanding of the adventure of Arthur’s knight. The study is based on analyzes of feminism and Arthurian literature as expressed by Larissa Tracy and Geraldine Heng; of critical texts about Arthurian adaptations such as Maureen Fries, as well as authors specialized in the original poem such as J. A. Burrow and uses the most recent translation into Portuguese of the medieval poem made by Artur Avelar in 2020.
References
A LENDA DO CAVALEIRO VERDE. Direção: David Lowery. Produção: A24. GooglePlay. 2019. 130 minutos.
SIR GAWAIN E O CAVALEIRO VERDE. Trad. de Artur Avelar. Belo Horizonte: Barbudânia, 2020.
BURROW, John Antony. A reading of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Routledge, 2020.
FRIEDMAN, Albert Barron. Morgan Le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Speculum, University of Chicago Press, v. 35, n. 2, p. 260-274, 1960.
FRIES, Maureen. How to Handle a Woman, or Morgan at the Movies. In: HARTY, Kevin J. (Ed.). King Arthur on Film: New Essays on Arthurian Cinema. Jefferson: McFarland, 1999, p. 67-80.
HEBERT, Jill. Morgan Le Fay, Shapeshifter. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. 2013.
HENG, Geraldine. Feminine knots and the Other Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. PMLA, Modern Language Association, v. 106, n. 3, p. 500-514, 1991.
LOWERY, David. The Green Knight’s Ending, Explained. Entrevista concedida a Joanna Robinson. Vanity Fair, 30 jul. 2021. Disponível em: https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2021/07/green-knight-ending-explained-does-he-die-gawain-dev-patel. Acesso em: 10 dez. 2022.
MORGAN, Gerald. The Significance of the Pentangle Symbolism in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. The Modern Language Review, v. 74, n. 4, p. 769-790, 1979.
TRACY, Larissa. A Knight of God or the Goddess?: Rethinking Religious Syncretism in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. Arthuriana, v. 17, n. 3, p. 31-55, 2007.
WARNER, Marina. Alone of All her sex. The Myth and the Cult of the Virgin Mary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2023 Gabriela Carlos Luz
![Creative Commons License](http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by/4.0/88x31.png)
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
This journal provides open access to all of it content on the principle that making research freely available to the public supports a greater global exchange of knowledge. Such access is associated with increased readership and increased citation of an author's work. For more information on this approach, see the Public Knowledge Project, which has designed this system to improve the scholarly and public quality of research, and which freely distributes the journal system as well as other software to support the open access publishing of scholarly resources. The names and email addresses entered in this journal site will be used exclusively for the stated purposes of this journal and will not be made available for any other purpose or to any other party.
Este trabalho está licenciado com uma Licença Creative Commons - Atribuição 4.0 Internacional.