Patrick Fagan – Addendum

In reading the second half of the story, particularly the climax scene, I was particularly confused by the concept of the Green Chapel. Several things about it seemed slightly odd to me, primarily that it isn’t a chapel at all, but rather more of a hollow mound in the ground. The recurring theme of the color green in still represented, but for a poem with heavy religious themes written in a time when piety was extremely important, it almost seems counterintuitive that there wouldn’t be an actual chapel. Additionally, the fact that the “chapel” doesn’t have a defined location gives it a somewhat otherworldly feel. This prompted me to research the region’s history and traditions further in hope of gaining a better understanding of this famous scene.

I discovered that while the fantastic tales of mythical Camelot and King Arthur are likely fictitious, there likely was an actual King Arthur whose deeds earned him enough notoriety to be immortalized in literary history. Although many historians disagree on exactly where Arthur may have ruled, the general consensus is that it was likely somewhere in Wales or Southern England. I remembered studying Celtic mythology back in high school, and the concept of mystical mounds is a common theme throughout Celtic and Irish mythology.

The Celts believed that the “Otherworld”, home of deities, fairies, mystical creatures, and even the dead, could be accessed through caves that resemble the Green Chapel. Heroes in these mythologies could access the Otherworld through these portals as part of epic quests, which aren’t that different from the Romance themes that helped shape many epic poems of the time, although Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was written centuries later.

The author likely drew on Celtic, Welsh, and Irish mythology, as well as current Christian beliefs, to enhance the story, and add a mystical feeling to them. We can see parallels through mythological beliefs and story structure, suggesting that centuries old writings and legends were major contributing factors in the writing of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Personally, I believe that knowing this background information makes the climactic scene all the more epic, and I certainly understand it much more than I did prior.

Writers and readers alike have spent much time analyzing the content of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, but one of the most significant aspects of Chaucer’s writing is its implications for literacy as a whole in Medieval England. “The Miller’s Tale” is an excellent example of this shift. In the early Middle Ages, writing and reading were skills reserved only for the elite, and most notably the church. Most texts and manuscripts were religious in one way or another, often scribed by monks. This is in sharp contrast to a couple hundred years later, when Chaucer lived. “The Miller’s Tale” is humorous, but also crude. It represents humor that many people of the time would have loved, but likely not religious officials. It represents a brand of writing that had likely existed for hundreds of years in voice or song, but had never been recorded until then.

So why is this significant? The popularity of The Canterbury Tales is indicative that the majority of England, the commoners, if you will, had now taken up an interest in literacy and reading. It’s no coincidence that this trend is also paralleled by the development of a merchant middle class, and a greater number of books because of the printing press. Works such as The Canterbury Tales gave people who may have previously dismissed literacy as a skill of the elite with no use to them a reason to learn to read and write. This trend likely helped give rise to the new middle class, and the innumerable applications of literacy strengthened England.

Over the course of a few hundred years, England evolved from a feudal nation, largely disconnected from the world, and often being invaded to the greatest superpower history has ever seen. It’s no stretch to attribute this rise partially to drastic increases in literacy, and stories such as “The Miller’s Tale” marked this historic transition. What on the surface seems like a crude, funny anecdote is truly one of the more significant pieces of literature to arise from this time period.