Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
International Journal of Social Sciences, cilt.8, sa.4, ss.198-215, 2024 (Hakemli Dergi)
Composed by an anonymous poet in the fourteenth century, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight demonstrates such primary features of a conventional medieval romance as the employment of the marvellous elements and the sensuous language, the motives of quest and courtly love. Nevertheless, regarded as an unconventional romance, Sir Gawain also interrogates and transforms the genre of the romance. Gawain is not an unblemished and pure knight. He is neither the paragon of virtue nor the incarnation of ideal perfection. He is portrayed as a flawed, fallible and vulnerable human. He oscillates between the symbols of the pentangle and the girdle, representative of the male principle and the female principle respectively. Hence, the hero has internal conflicts. This paper maintains that Gawain’s journey into the uncultivated landscape should be seen as a quest into his own mindscape. This study investigates how the dialectical tension and internal conflicts in the psyche of the hero give the romance modern interiority.