Sir Gawain: Knight of the Goddess

by John Matthews

Restores Gawain of Camelot to his true role as the foremost representative and servant of the Goddess.

• The full story of Gawain of Camelot that restores a lost piece of the great Arthurian tapestry.

• Traces the historical trends that demoted Gawain from the foremost knight of the Round Table to a villain and womanizer.

• The result of more than 20 years of research by one of the world's leading scholars of Arthurian mythology.

Sir Gawain, the nephew of King Arthur, was once the most important knight at Arthur's court, a shining example of all that was best in chivalry. He even outranked the famous Lancelot. Yet as the popularity of the Arthurian romances grew, the character of Gawain became increasingly diminished in popular literature. John Matthews explores the phenomenon that influenced the recasting of Gawain from hero to womanizing villain, providing a scholarly context through which Gawain's role as the representative of the Goddess upon Earth--the real Green Knight of Camelot and Sovereignty's Champion--may be restored. In addition, the author presents a unique view of the mythology of Britain and its connections with the historical changes that took place over many hundreds of years in the religious and mystical traditions of the country.

Genres: Arthurian, Mythology, History, Nonfiction

208 pages, Paperback

Published April 30, 2003

About the author

John Matthews is an historian, folklorist and author. He has been a full time writer since 1980 and has produced over ninety books on the Arthurian Legends and Grail Studies, as well as short stories and a volume of poetry. He has devoted much of the past thirty years to the study of Arthurian Traditions and myth in general. His best known and most widely read works are ‘Pirates’ (Carlton/Atheneum), No 1 children’s book on the New York Times Review best-seller list for 22 weeks in 2006, ‘The Grail, Quest for Eternal Life’ (Thames & Hudson, 1981) ‘The Encyclopaedia of Celtic Wisdom’ (Element, 1994) and ‘The Winter Solstice’ (Quest Books, 1999) which won the Benjamin Franklin Award for that year. His book ‘Celtic Warrior Chiefs’ was a New York Public Library recommended title for young people.

Reviews

[Nicky · Rating 2 out of 5]

Read part of this, but ended up deciding that it wasn't really convincing me well enough. The same links that John Matthews makes with Irish heroes and Gawain have been made between Irish heroes and Kay, equally (no, more) convincingly, by Linda M. Gowans -- and by me. It just seems like there's far too much we don't know for anyone to base a whole book on the idea that Gawain was originally a knight attached to a goddess. And it seems like Matthews didn't attend too closely to the chronology of the Arthurian canon. If Gwalchmai was something to do with the goddess, surely it would have been mentioned in Culhwch and Olwen? Plenty of other goddess connections are there for the taking!

There is interesting stuff here, including a translation of L'Enfances Gauvain in the back, but I just couldn't go along with the main theory. I think Gawain's reputation is more strongly connected to Arthur's than a hypothetical goddess.

[Jeffrey Dixon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sir Gawain is one of the most contradictory of Arthurian heroes, beginning his career in medieval French and German poetry as the very model of chivalry (and, as such, irresistible to women) but ending it, in the heavily “ecclesiasticized” prose romances, as a treacherous womanizer. Why?
An attempt to solve this literary enigma was attempted by the scholar Jessie L. Weston (1850–1928), who seems to have shared (and certainly contributed to) my life-long obsession with the Arthurian legends and the figure of Sir Gawain. This obsession began for me as a child when I realised that many of the streets on Downham, the council estate in South-East London where I grew up, were named after characters in the Arthurian stories (for reasons that I have never been able to uncover). The street I grew up in was actually called Pendragon Road and was completely encircled by Roundtable Road. Nearby were Merlin Gardens, Launcelot Road, Galahad Road...and many more. But, sadly, none named after Sir Gawain, who Weston (who was also born in South London) considered to be the original, pagan Grail winner, as I would later discover.
I think it was precisely Gawain's flawed character and tragic fate (his attempt to preserve his family's honour helped to bring down his uncle Arthur and the Adventurous Kingdom of Logres with him) which so attracted me to him. The first of my juvenile poems that I deemed worthy of preservation is about his last night on earth, talking of the "lonely vigil" that he keeps on the eve of the Last Battle and ending with the lines: "And he awaits the broad cock’s croon,/ The ensuing battle – and his death at noon."
I don’t know when or how it began for Weston, but her own fascination with the figure of Gawain is evidenced by the translations she produced of little known stories of the knight from French and German romances; and by her claim that he was the hero of a lost cycle of adventures which she would call the Geste of Syr Gawayne. He was also the subject of the first of her several groundbreaking studies of the legends of major Arthurian characters.
Following her publication of a verse translation of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival (in which Gawain’s adventures are almost as important as the title character’s), Weston embarked on her study of the origins and significance of the legend of Sir Gawain, which would appear in 1897. The book would go some way to explaining the vilification which this hero’s character underwent in the course of development of the Arthurian Mythos; and would consequently provide me with a plausible explanation of why the name of Gawain remains so strikingly absent from the streets of South London!
In this groundbreaking study, Weston suggested that it should be possible to determine which of the adventures that have come down to us “might with probability be regarded as forming part of his original story”. These incidents would reveal themselves to be “necessary and integral” parts of Gawain’s story “by their frequent recurrence in the romances devoted to him, and their analogy to ancient Celtic tradition”. She ends the introductory chapter of her book with a humble request: “If in the course of these Studies certain points are established which may impel those better qualified than the present writer to pursue the investigation yet further, they will have amply fulfilled their object.”
It would be a brave soul who could claim to be better qualified than a scholar who read many of the romances in manuscript in their original languages; but a contemporary researcher who is undoubtedly well qualified to do so, by his tireless investigation and championing of the Arthurian and Grail legends over several decades, is John Matthews. What is required to fulfil Weston’s request is to make a comparative study of the major texts and identify the key themes and characters which recur throughout, noting the most important variants; and then synthesising the results. This is precisely what Matthews has undertaken in the present work, with considerable success.
Some of the important themes that Weston establishes in her relatively short book are that he was the original lover of his uncle’s wife; that he has a fairy mistress; and that he is therefore the champion of the female denizens of her Otherworld realm, the Land of Women. This leads to Gawain in the medieval texts becoming known as the Knight of Maidens; but, as the legends become increasingly ecclesiasticised, it is this same affinity with a pre-Christian paganism that leads to him being vilified as a serial seducer and his peerless chivalry downgraded until he is dismissed as a treacherous, vengeful backstabber.
The American scholar R.S. Loomis, in his Celtic Myth and Arthurian Romance of 1926, argues that Gawain’s mistress is not merely a fay, but the ancient goddess of moon and earth, in all her phases and seasons; and that he is no light of love, because he always loves only her, no matter how various the forms in which she presents herself. Matthews follows on from Weston and Loomis in identifying Gawain as the faithful lover and champion of Lady Sovereignty, the Goddess-upon-Earth, one of whose many names is Morgain la Fée.
He also follows Weston in naming Gawain as the original Grail Winner; but his reconstruction of the primordial story of the Green Knight at Camelot (as Matthews calls him), “as it may have been before time and cultural change fragmented it”, is as uniquely his own as it is boldly speculative. It is not presented in full until the end of the book; and you will need to read each chapter carefully to follow his densely-argued reconstruction of each layer of the fragmented myth. By doing so, however, you will experience to the full one of the greatest boons of this invaluable book: that is, Matthews’ summaries and explications of a raft of texts, some of which have never been translated into English; and many of which will be unfamiliar to all but the most dedicated Arthurian scholar.
An Appendix also provides us with the first English translation, by the scholar of paganism Prudence Jones, of a little-known thirteenth century poem about the childhood of Gawain.
This in itself justifies the bringing out of a new edition of this book, which was first published in 1990 by The Aquarian Press. It had at that time the subtitle: Restoring an Archetype. If the author on reconsideration felt that that was too bold a claim (he has removed it from the second edition), I would nevertheless argue that he has set us on the royal road to doing so. Enjoy the journey!
If you enjoyed this review, you might also be interested in my blog: Myth Dancing (incorporating the Twenty Third Letter)

[Fishface · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is packed with information starting well before the Foreword. The author continues to produce the names and synopses of more and more Arthurian stories, like countless rabbits out of the world's deepest hat, until the last page of the bibliography. In the course of the book he chases the ever-changing character of Gawain through the endless, enchanted forest that was his true home, showing us as we go what Gawain was about all those years. This book needed a final copyedit but that didn't even slow me down. A must if you are interested in the Arthurian legends, pre-Christian archetypes or the transition from Pagan to Christian symbology.

[D.l. · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one I'd been wanting to read for a long time. I wasn't disappointed.

The linking of various legends from the Arthurian cycles is well done, there's no confusion of texts. I particularly enjoyed how the author shows parallels between the Irish and Welsh myth cycles and certain tales about Sir Gawain.

This is not a fluffy read. It's a scholarly work that is well written and easy to follow.

[Richard Swan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tendentious, in that it tries to link all the Gawain narratives into a neat whole and tips into speculative over-assertion, but exceptionally useful in offering a survey of all the Gawain material and tracing its roots back into Celtic tales.

[Jo · Rating 2 out of 5]

Matthews presents the view that Gawain was originally connected to goddess worship and only later became this womanising character. Sort of an okay read but I found it didn't particularly hold my interest.

[Jim Greene · Rating 2 out of 5]

Scholarly study of one of King Arthur’s greatest knights. Dry unless this is your interest.

[Kathy · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Matthews argues that Sir Gawain is a knight of the Goddess, although he fails miserably at doing so. Don't get me wrong I thought this book was very interesting, but really that is all that it is. As a Pagan I so wanted to believe this, but my schooling in Medieval British literature knows better.

First of all authors like Mallory and Monmouth have expressed their disdain for the Celts which the Anglo-Saxons and the Romans had no problem wiping out. So obviously the Scots and the Irish would be considered evil or impure or faery. So why exactly would Gawain be the one and the same as Cu Cuchulain? Other than the fact that Cuchulain is just as arrogant and pigheaded like Gawain they really have nothing in common. The author then makes a case that Percival, Lancelot, Galahad, and Mordred used to all be aspects of Gawain until Christianity came into being and Gawain became demonized.

Many parts of this book contradict each other and other chapters and basically the only thing that is for certain is that Gawain is the nephew of King Arthur. The author is not quite sure who his mother is. He says it could be Morgouse or as some call her Anna.

If anything I learned more about Morgan Le Fey who is one of my favourite Arthurian characters. In one chapter Mr. Matthews argues that perhaps Gawain is the son of Morgan Le Fey and that she may really be the Morrighan from Irish mythology and Paganism. Both as a Pagan and a Medieval British Literature student I don't buy this argument either. Completely different personalities and different situations. Two separate bad ass entities.

As a Pagan I too can agree that many aspects of Arthuran Literature were changed with the conversion of Christianity from the way that women and sexuality was viewed,but Gawain's characteristics remain the same in the Welsh and romanticized versions. If anything Gawain actually became a better person when he became chivalrous. As his punishment for decapitating a woman Queen Guinevere forced Gawain to become a Knight for all ladies. I highly doubt that makes him a knight for a Goddess. By making Gawain chivalrous he thus can't rape or have sex with every woman that he sees like he did in other versions.

Gawain and the Green Knight is a tale and lesson that teaches Gawain to mature and be noble. This story prepares him to be the person he is meant to be, but in the end we see that his rash behaviour gets him killed when he tries to avenge his brothers' deaths thus dooming his uncle's reign. While I do see the symbolism of the cycle of life, death and rebirth I fail to understand how it relates to a Goddess or any deity for that matter. This is more character development if anything.

Don't get me wrong I do love Gawain. He was the most honest and real character in all of Arthurian Literature. Gawain was not afraid to fight for what he thought was right even when it was wrong. But it has nothing to do with the Goddess and to make such a claim is not accurate or true.

[Sonia Grace · Rating 2 out of 5]

John Matthews starts off with the claim that Gawain was originally the champion of the Goddess. I could accept this as an extension of Gawain's connection to the various realms of Faery, and his obvious otherworldly connections, so I was interested to read the book. Unfortunately he lost me almost immediately when he started presenting evidence - from stories about other knights. It's true that there is some confusion over names and spelling in many of the old texts, but there's usually at least a family resemblance. When He started trying to convince me that adventures attributed to Lancelot were actually Gawain originally, I started getting skeptical.

He rarely backs up his claims with any textual evidence, instead relying on increasingly hypothetical situations that stray farther and farther from the Arthurian canon. In many places he bases an argument on a story he guesses must have existed at some point but was lost to time or was never written down. That's just... not how scholarship works.

There were a few interesting tidbits about the Grail Quest, which was also the only time Matthews actually started backing up arguments with primary sources, but most of the first two thirds of the book was just speculation as he tried really hard to fit the stories to his theory. Gawain was often associated with damsels, with powerful queens and sorceresses, and with courtesy to ladies, and he could easily have written a book about Gawain and the Goddess from this perspective. Gawain is the knight with perhaps the clearest non-Christian roots, and has often been associated with the realms of faery and of death, and also with solar gods, as his strength waxes and wanes with the sun. The assertion that Gawain was associated with the Goddess is not totally outrageous, though it is a bit of a stretch. John Matthews, however, did not argue his case convincingly.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Re-reading summer 2020. The appendices contain some rare finds.