Sir Gawain And The Green Knight Analysis

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The Arthurian Community was known for its warrior driven and knight in shining armor storylines. Most of the stories written in that era had at least one fight scene and a knight in shining armor trying to change his ways, like Sir Gawain and The Green Knight. But, this changed when Marie De France’s Lanval came along. Two things happened being a woman writer was established and a story that finally didn’t have a warrior scene and a knight in shining armor emerged. It was the start of a new era, not only for the Arthurian Community, but also for women. The perspective changed. The perspective of things such as; character development, the way things were handled in the story (democracy to warrior), and the perspective of loyalty, honesty, and brotherhood. Things like this had a depth to them that they didn’t have before, and that’s where the perspective changes. Between Lanval and Sir Gawain, the perspective of women was seen in a different light. Marie De France chooses her main character to be female and the love interest male. As opposed to Sir Gawain, you have a knight in shining armor who uses women as a form of plot, or teaching the reader that all women are “liars and thieves.” The way Marie De France describes a woman is elegant, “Her body…show more content…
You have democracy, “They assembled, judged and decided, that Lanval should have his day; but he must find pledges for his lord to guarantee that he would await the judgement, return, and be present at it” (136). The perspective of these two views of how they went about loyalty, honesty, and brotherhood, in general, is vastly different. The male perspective is that sense of warrior perspective, blood needs to be shed and there needs to be a fight or a near death experience that teaches a knight what they did wrong. The female perspective handled things in a more organized manner, with a court and people that voted on where Lanval’s destiny was
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