Ep. 63: Adultery and Courtly Love

Young Heretics

Spencer Klavan

Society & Culture, Education

4.9 • 4.5K Ratings

🗓️ 27 July 2021

⏱️ 53 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

As Gawain gallops toward his potentially deadly encounter with the Green Knight, he faces an unexpected challenge: seduction. In the second Young Heretics episode on "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Spencer Klavan discusses the tradition of courtly love poetry and what to make of its more scandalous elements.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Alright, let's get down to it. Let's talk about love and adultery.
0:09.6	When we last left our hero, Gowing, he had galloped forth boldly to meet what he was pretty sure
0:16.5	was going to be his death because remember we are talking about the poem Gowing and the Green
0:20.8	Knight. It's one of the triumphs of middle English literature and it begins with surely one of
0:27.4	the greatest openings in all of poetry, probably all of literature for full stop and that is this
0:33.8	big green handsome knight who rides into King Arthur's court, challenges anybody who wants to
0:40.5	take a blow at him. Gowing rises up the young golden boy, the golden boy versus the green knight,
0:48.5	and cuts the guy's head off, the guy picks his head up and says, see you in a year, pal.
0:53.6	And so Gowing is bound by his chivalric honor to go forth and to ride forth against the Green Knight.
1:00.2	When we last left him, he had prayed in the cold of winter for some kind of shelter and he found
1:07.5	a castle which is going to turn out to be the castle of Bertelac, Lord Bertelac and his lady.
1:14.2	And so this is our opportunity to talk about sex in this poem before we get to the thrilling
1:19.7	conclusion of the whole thing. Those of you who are watching, I am still wearing my green shirt.
1:23.9	I don't usually wear two shirts, the same shirt, two episodes in a row, but it's Gowing and the
1:28.8	Green Knight. So I have to be wearing green the whole time. Before I start reading and talking to
1:33.9	you about the situation that Gowing encounters in this castle, and remember that this is really
1:38.9	getting up to the point when he's going to have to face the Green Knight. And it's an incredible
1:44.0	tension builder because we're all waiting to know what's going to happen in that confrontation.
1:47.8	And then suddenly there's actually a really long drama between Lord and Lady Bertelac and Gowing.
1:54.1	And it is all based on this notion of what we now call courtly love. That is the love that takes
2:01.3	place among the elites, the upper crust, and the courts. Initially, this is a separate literary
2:06.7	tradition from the literary tradition that celebrates sort of knights and the chivalric code.
	...

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