Speech representation as a narrative technique in Sir Gawain and the green knight

Abstract

Speech plays a central role in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a trait that it shares with other Arthurian romances. Accordingly, its dialogues have been scrutinized for their lexical choices and their significance for a number of key elements in the story. However, the stylistic and pragmatic effects of speech representation have not received similar attention. By presenting a typology of modes of speech representation that takes into account the distinctive features of medieval texts and focusing on their role in (mis)guiding the audience's reaction towards the events they are presented with, this paper identifies the representation of speech as a key narrative technique in the poem, an element of the poet's craft comparable to others that have been studied more frequently, such as his lexical choices or the text's structural patterns. In this respect, the paper is of interest to literary critics of medieval narrative and historical stylisticians.