Another student, Jesse Sumpter, summarized an article by one Kathryn Walls on the axe in Sir Gawain. She connects the axe with the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3: The axe is already laid at the foot of the trees. That fits the setting of the Green Knight’s first appearance – during the Christmas season, when not only the coming of Jesus but the coming of John would be celebrated.
Walls also points to Augustine’s interpretation of Matthew 3 in the light of Jesus’ words about fruit in Matthew 12. Not every tree is cut down immediately; the axe is announced, the threat proclaimed, and then Israel is given time to produce fruit and escape burning. So too Gawain, who has a year for penitence before the axe of the Green Knight “nirks” his neck.
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE
Greetings on a Morning Walk
Blackberry vines, you hold this ground in the shade of a willow: all thorns, no fruit. *…
An Outline of Trees
They rise above us, arching, spreading, thin Where trunk and bough give way to veining twig. We…
Fallacy
A shadow cast by something invisible falls on the white cover of a book lying on my…
