Sir Gawain and the Green Knight : a reappraisal
"In 1839 Sir Frederic Madden rescued Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the oblivion into which it had fallen since the beginning of the seventeenth century. In the intervening century and a half, critics have acknowledged the poem as one of the masterpieces of English literature, but have they really come to grips with Gawain? Neither Morton Bloomfield not Donald Howard, after reviewing the current state of Gawain studies in 1961 and 1968 respectively, believed that they had. A survey of the last two decades' work in the areas considered by Bloomfield (literary history, religion and myth, comic and game elements, genre, structure, diction) reveals that critics have still not done so. In fact, the recognition by contemporary critics of the high degree of ambiguity in Gawain, at levels ranging from the individual work through characterization and symbolism to the poem's very structure, must make us question whether we can come to grips with Gawain if, by "coming to grips" with the poem, we mean unraveling the complexities and solving the puzzles in and about the poem to reveal the meaning of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"--Abstract
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 1990