Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Middle English: "Sir Gawayn and þe Grene Knyȝt") is a late 14th-century Middle English chivalric romance. It is one of the best known Arthurian stories, with its plot combining two types of folklore motifs, the beheading game and the exchange of winnings. Written in stanzas of alliterative verse, each of which ends in a rhyming bob and wheel, it draws on Welsh, Irish, and English stories, as well as the French chivalric tradition. It is an important example of a chivalric romance, which typically involves a hero who
Treason in Arthurian legend pillory, the wheel, or the removal of the accused's eyes. One source reads that “in 1476, Jean Bon, the would-be assassin of the dauphin Charles, was fortunate not to be punished capitally, though he did have his eyes gouged out.” Punishments of treason could also contain a sense of a macabre “poetic justice,” or a punishment tailored to fit the crime, as in the instance of counterfeiter Jean Jouye who was boiled alive “presumably because his crime involved the melting down of coin.” Imprisonment for traitors was usually the result of a reduced death sentence, rather than of an initial