Gawain, << guh WAYN, GAH wayn, GAH wihn, or GOW uhn >> Sir, was the nephew of the legendary King Arthur of medieval Britain and one of the knights first associated with Arthur’s story. Gawain died fighting his treacherous kinsman Modred in the chronicle tradition of Arthurian narratives that developed from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain (about 1136).
In medieval French and German accounts, Gawain is identified as both the finest model of chivalry and a prime example of hypocrisy. This confusion over his character continues in Sir Thomas Malory’s English prose narrative, Le Morte Darthur (about 1470). In this work, Gawain is both a hero and a villain. In English poetic romances, however, he represents the chivalrous ideals of truthfulness and loyalty. He is the only knight of the Round Table to accept the mysterious Green Knight’s challenge in one of the most important medieval English verse romances, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (late 1300’s). See Round Table.
