The Humanities Index

An allegory is a narrative in which the agents and action, and sometimes the setting as well, are contrived not only to make sense in themselves, but also to signify a second, correlated order of persons, things, concepts, or events.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight represents a new conception of the heroic ideal, women, nature, and narrative technique. A comparison/contrast to Beowulf illustrates these changing ideals.

Somewhere between the merry sensuality of Ovid and the ecstatic spirituality of Platonism is the tradition of Courtly Love. Courtly love resembles the Ovidian convention in that it is not supersensous: its aim is physical consummation, its object of love physical beauty. It differs from the Ovidian tradition in its interpretation of the nature of [...]

We, as humans, decide that we will take the pilgrimage of life to its ultimate conclusion — we decide to play the game.

SGGK has been described as a quest romance. As typical of a medieval romance, it has external dangers: the Green Knight and winter.