The Knight of the Pentangle and the Simulacrum of Chivalry: Arthuriana and the Hyperreal
By Theresa FitzPatrick
Throughout my first decade of teaching at the college level, the hipster aesthetic was everywhere. I remember at least three students regularly checking the time by removing a pocket watch from a waistcoat, instead of checking their phone . . . or even the clock prominently displayed on the wall. One insisted on using a typewriter for his essays, which I must admit, I respected. Intentionally using old technology, the more inconvenient the better, seemed to be a hallmark of this trend, and it was easy to mock at the time. But it seemed to sprout from a libidinal desire to return to something we never appreciated when it was necessary. When more efficient ways of doing things come along, returning to the inefficient is rebellious. It requires taking the time to learn a dead skill or find an out-of-production device. This pull to ‘embrace the old’ can also be traced in literary styles across the centuries. The Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) regularly used medieval archaisms in his poems, like ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad,’ which not only reflects this practice but also shows the power of adopting an older voice. It adds an air of authority, like the poem is speaking to the reader from far in the past—even if was written just last year.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written during a literary period known as the Alliterative Revival, a Middle English predecessor to the 2000s hipster movement. By the 1300s, it was no longer the poetic fashion to use alliterative verse as in older works like Beowulf. After the Norman Invasion in 1066, French influence over the English language slowly gave it the flexibility to use end rhyme instead, and many poets tried to adopt this more continental style. This shift can be seen in the end rhyme of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, a rough contemporary to Gawain. Chaucer’s Parson even mocked poets who used alliteration in his ‘Prologue’: ‘I kan nat geest “rum, ram, ruf” by letter’ [I cannot recite ‘run, ram, ruf,’ letter by letter] (line 43). Whether the Revival poets were aware of this ridicule or not, the late fourteenth century saw ‘a renewed flowering of alliterative poetry, especially in the north and west of Britain.’[1] The Gawain poet in particular embraced and mastered this technique, using an alliterative style that pealed out echoes of the past.
The poem’s alliteration makes it a strong choice for the sort of hyperreal reading usually reserved for works written in the postmodern era and beyond. The poem attempts to sound older and more ‘authentically Arthurian’ than it actually is. As suggested in the previous article, a simulacrum—a copy with no original—can develop whenever a move is made to substantiate an ideological myth by glorifying the past. This phenomenon, seemingly unavoidable in modern culture, is neither new nor harmless, particularly when an especially invested believer (like Gawain) starts to realize the truth. Instead of presenting a realistic court, Arthur’s court in Gawain is a hyperreality, glorifying a fictitious past (Arthur and the chivalric code) to substantiate an ideological present (monarchial authority and the aristocracy).
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight contains a wealth of examples which help to support this hypothesis. Each of the key players in the story exists in tandem, but, for the purposes of this article, I will focus on two of these pairs: the kings (Arthur/Lord Bertilak) and the heroes (Gawain/Green Knight). The hyperreal version of each pair exists not in the otherworld but in the courtly one, each a fake plastic version of what they are supposedly simulating. Neither Arthur’s court nor Gawain uphold the chivalric code when put to the test, though Lord Bertilak and the Green Knight do so with ease. In the end, as we will see, this imbalance is acknowledged but only as a surface detail, as Gawain will assimilate back into the hyperreal of his own accord—a situation which proves frustrating when the reader knows that he knows it is fake.
“Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Inn Sign, Connah's Quay. Photograph by Ian S, 6 Dec. 2011.
The story opens at a Christmas feast in King Arthur’s court. Together, the knights have conquered the known world and are still, somehow, young and beautiful enough to enjoy it: ‘For al was this fayre folk in her first age’ [All these fair folk were in their first age] (line 54). Even the king was ‘so joly of his joyfnes, and sumwhat childgered’ [He brimmed with ebullience, being almost boyish] (line 86). Arthur, his knights, and the entire court are rich, powerful, accomplished, and a perfect vision of youthful vigor. The only thing they are missing is entertainment, as they soon lose interest in gifts and games. They are, to be blunt, bored. Just as Arthur calls for a story, the Green Knight, astride a bright green battle horse, bursts into the room and throws down a challenge: pick a champion to take a swing at him with an axe. In a year’s time, the Knight will deliver an equivalent blow on his own turf. ‘Now hyye, and let se tite,’ says the Knight, ‘Dar any herinne oght say!’ [Does no one have the nerve / to wager in this way?] (lines 299–300).
This is exactly the excitement they were looking for: a Christmas game! However, no one volunteers. After the Green Knight mocks Arthur’s knights for being ‘berdles chylder’ [bum-fluffed bairns] (line 280), no one rises to take offense or challenge his assessment. Neither does the group make any move to play the Knight’s game and uphold Arthur’s honor. Either of these omissions alone would be enough to shame the court, and the Knight himself is surprised by their cowardly response, famously shouting:
‘What, is this Arthures hous,’ quoth the hathel thenne,
‘That al the rous rennes of thurgh ryalmes so mony?
Where is now your sourquydrye and your conquestes,
Your gryndellayk and your greme, and your grete wordes?’
[‘So here is the House of Arthur,’ he scoffed,
‘whose virtues reverberate across vast realms.
Where’s the fortitude and fearlessness you’re so famous for?
And the breathtaking bravery and the big-mouth bragging?’] (lines 309–12)
In response, the crowd remains silent, forcing their king to make the first move in defense of the court’s good name. It isn’t until Arthur holds the Green Knight’s axe aloft, ready to strike, that Gawain rises to volunteer instead. While Arthur shows himself to be a strong leader in this moment, his weakness is in his followers. They seemed perfectly content to watch their king pick up the deadly gauntlet without moving to do so first.
After taking the challenge, Gawain journeys to the Green Chapel for his return blow, eventually crossing an otherworldly boundary. There he encounters the hospitality of Lord Bertilak. The contrast between the version of Arthur’s court he just left and Bertilak’s house is stark. The description of Hautdesert Castle as Gawain rides up suggests a powerful lord, as it is fortified by ‘the abataylment in the best lawe’ [battlements embellished in the boldest style], ‘A better barbican that burne blusched upon never’ [The knight had not seen a more stunning structure] (lines 790, 793). The castle itself is ‘the comlokest that ever knyght aghte’ [The most commanding castle a knight ever kept] (line 767). He is greeted at the gate by a host of courtiers eager to serve him, some on their knees, and bring him to the lord of the manor. The great hall is lit by a huge fire, Gawain is waited on hand and foot, and Bertilak’s first move is to greet the knight, embracing him as an old friend. The description of the ‘lorde of the lede’ [master of the manor] (line 833) is filtered through Gawain’s eyes and stands in sharp contrast to the childish Arthur:
Gawayn glyght on the gome that godly hym gret
And thught hit a bolde burne that the burgh aghte—
A hoge hathel for the nones, and of hyghe eldee.
Brode, bryght, was his berde, and al bever-hued,
Sturne, stif on the stryththe on stalworth schonkes,
Felle face as the fyre, and fre of hys speche;
And wel hym semed, for sothe, as the segge thught,
To lede a lortschyp in lee of leudes ful gode.
[Gawain gazed at the lord who greeted him so gracefully,
the great one who governed that grand estate,
powerful and large, in the prime of his life,
with a bushy beard as red as a beaver’s,
steady in his stance, solid of build,
with a fiery face and fine conversation:
and it suited him well, so it seemed to Gawain,
to keep such a castle and captain his knights.] (lines 842–49)
While Arthur is said to possess experience, wisdom, physical strength, and military prowess all in a youthful body, Bertilak is the more realistic embodiment of what such a leader would look like and behave—all at an appropriate age. While Arthur’s entourage is a silly, party-loving group of medieval frat boys, Bertilak’s is noble, sober, loyal, ready to serve, and quick to follow their leader’s commands. Even though Arthur readily offers the Green Knight hospitality, no one in his household moves to do so immediately, as Bertilak’s do. The two leaders are obviously different, not merely in that Bertilak is superior, but in that Arthur-as-advertised is an impossibility. He is a simulacrum, while Bertilak is more realistic and therefore able to exist freely without an image to simulate.
Concerning our heroes, Sir Gawain is presented as the paragon of nobility and chivalry throughout the story. He is seated next to the queen—a place of honor—in the opening scene, he is the first to volunteer when the Green Knight needs a challenger, and his chivalric bone fides are evident in the symbolism on his shield: Our Lady on the inside, to remind him of his piety, and the pentangle, or five-pointed star, on the outside to show the world his knightly values. Not only is he the champion of the Round Table, but he is also a true disciple of the chivalric code:
The fyft fyve that I finde that the frek used
Was fraunchyse and felawschyp forbe al thyng;
His clasnnes and his cortaysye croked were never,
And pité, that passes alle poyntes—thyse pure fyve
Were harder happed on that hathel then on any other.
[The fifth set of five which I heard the knight followed
included friendship and fraternity with fellow men,
purity and politeness that impressed at all times,
and pity, which surpassed all pointedness. Five things
Which meant more to Gawain that to most other men.] (lines 651–55)
For most of the adventure, he shows bravery, courtesy, and sexual restraint. Gawain’s weakness, however, is his fear of mortality.
While in the castle, Gawain rebuffs Lady Bertilak’s sexual advances (which eventually turn out to be fake). However, when she offers a magical green belt that will keep him safe from the Green Knight’s mortal blow, he accepts and keeps it a secret from his host. This move reveals a flaw in Arthur’s great champion, but it also contrasts greatly with how the Green Knight took his blow without a moment’s fear or hesitation:
The grene knyght upon grounde graythely hym dresses:
A littel lut with the hede, the lere he discovered;
His longe lovelych lokkes he layd over his croun,
Let the naked nec to the note schewe.
[In the standing position he prepared to be struck,
bent forward, revealing a flash of green flesh
as he heaped his hair to the crown of his head
the nape of his neck now naked and ready.] (417–20)
It is almost as if the Green Knight, by nature of his otherworldliness, knows that a ‘blow’ in the hyperreal is nothing to fear. He can pick up his head and keep going. Additionally, when the time comes for Gawain to take his own blow at the Green Chapel, he flinches and pulls back. Taking the belt and ducking the blow are Gawain’s most upsetting moments, as they not only reveal his cowardice but betray his oath as a knight.
A rock formation inside Lud's Church, a very narrow ravine in England's Peak District National Park, reputed to be the model for the "Green Chapel" in the medieval poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Photographer, August Schwerdfeger, 5 June 2016.
The problem is no one cares. The Green Knight (revealed to be Lord Bertilak) has a good laugh and forgives Gawain’s sins. He even describes them as understandable: ‘Bot for ye lufed you lyf—the lasse I yow blame’ [but you loved your own life; so I blame you less] (line 2368). Bertilak invites Gawain to a feast where they can toast Gawain’s health and celebrate his adventure, indicating Bertilak’s knowledge that the chivalric code is an impossible thing for any mortal man to uphold. At the end of the day, it is all just a game, right? Gawain, however, cannot get over his humiliation and immediately starts the long journey home, cursing his own weakness and (seemingly out of nowhere) the evil wiles of women. In a mere ten lines, the shamed and confused Gawain returns to Arthur to accept his punishment and prove that the chivalric code is valid. He has been offered a new perspective, and the foundation of his worldview has been shaken, but he still expects the code to be upheld in Arthur’s court. The opposite occurs, however. After Gawain relates the story, the court applauds him, even choosing to wear the sign of his shame—the green garter—as a symbol of honor and solidarity. As Susan Aronstein confirms in her Introduction to British Arthurian Narrative, ‘The court redefines the grisly beheading game as an amusing Christmas interlude and the green girdle as a sign of victory. Furthermore, the poem exposes chivalric virtues, which were often used to bolster the aristocracy’s claim to power and privilege, to be convenient rather than constant.’[2] In traveling to the otherworld, Gawain is given the opportunity to see the court for what it is, to recognize how its embrace of the code of chivalry is illusory and ceases to hold meaning once its use value has diminished.
Through a Baudrillardian lens, Sir Gawain ends the story as a disappointment, a hero who fails to uphold his own moral code, learns that this code has no substance, and yet chooses to cling to it anyway. Throughout the story, powerful and omniscient forces use him as a tool and give him the chance to open his eyes, but instead of returning to Bertilak’s table to celebrate the game’s end, he chooses to depart, licking his wounds. Bertilak’s ability to ‘out-king’ Arthur, followed directly by his dismissal of the knightly virtues’ importance, upholds and dismantles chivalry at the same time. In the end, it is mere self-preservation that is celebrated as a common value. At court, the symbol of the garter becomes a sign of knightly honor, even though, by taking it, Gawain betrayed the code of chivalry.
If signs are as malleable as Baudrillard suggests, there should be no confusion over whether the garter is shameful or honorable. It can be both and neither, as the symbol itself, just like the Round Table, Arthur, and even chivalric virtues, are simulations of simulations. Other than Gawain, everyone else in the story uses them when convenient and tosses them aside when they aren’t. In this way, a hyperreal king and court count themselves victorious at the end of a quest that dismantles their validity. As Gawain moves from the courtly world (insipid and meaningless), to an otherworld (mysterious and powerful), then back to a hyperreality that celebrates his failures, the contrast between the real and the hyperreal is vividly apparent, but he cannot let the hyperreal go.
It is significant, I believe, that a story that dismantles the ideals of its age was written in a style meant to harken back to an older time. From the jump, an informed reader knows they are in a ‘Once upon a time.’ Everything should be taken with a grain of salt and a heart for playfulness, just as Renaissance Festival patrons understand. However, the stakes are raised considerably when the hyperreal isn’t presented as a story or a game, but as real life. The one who takes the damage is the idealist—the one who wholly believes. Gawain’s pain comes not from his sins but from the fact that there was no punishment. He was, in fact, celebrated for his trespasses. If, as this argument posits, the hyperreal glorifies the past to substantiate an ideological present, the true believers occupy a very precarious place. Unable to laugh at the joke, they instead see how much they lost by investing so completely in the simulacrum. While my daughter is now grown and has long since forgiven me for my playful game with the King of the Renaissance Festival, more deeply concerning are the Gawains: those whose adherence to an ideological myth lead them to lash out in anger when the cracks in that myth start to show.
Author Bio:
Theresa FitzPatrick (she/her) is an Associate Professor of English at Concordia University, St. Paul, where she teaches a variety of courses in English literature and literary theory. She holds a PhD in literature and criticism, and her primary research interests include medieval otherworld journeys, the real/unreal binary, and ways postmodern theory can enhance students’ reading of older texts.
Bibliography:
Simon Armitage, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007).
Susan Aronstein, An Introduction to British Arthurian Narrative (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012).
Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Parson’s Prologue and Tale,” Harvard's Geoffrey Chaucer Website (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University). Accessed August 3, 2026. https://chaucer.fas.harvard.edu/pages/
parsons-prologue-and-tale
Stephen Greenblatt, gen. ed. The Norton Anthology of English Literature. Vol. A, The Middle Ages, 10th edn., ed. James Simpson (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018).
Daisy Jones, “20 Years On: The Rise and Fall of the Hipster,” VICE, May 31, 2023. https://www.vice.com/en/article/the-hipster-handbook-20-years-later/
John Keats, “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad,” Poetry Foundation. Accessed August 3, 2026. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44475/la-belle-dame-sans-merci-a-ballad
Jeff Rider, “The Other Worlds of Romance,” In The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Romance, ed. Roberta L. Krueger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 115–31.
NOTES:
[1] The Norton Anthology of English Literature, vol. A, The Middle Ages, 10th ed., gen. ed. Stephen Greenblatt, ed. James Simpson (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), 201.
[2] Susan Aronstein, An Introduction to British Arthurian Narrative (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012), 147.
