Digital Portfolio Assignments 9/16

Kathryn Walls is a contributor to American Notes and Queries (ANQ), a quarterly journal containing short articles, notes and reviews covering British and American literature.  Her article “The Axe in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”” published in ANQ, analyzes the significance of the axe and suggests what the axe might symbolize.

 Walls stated the axe “…goes on to govern the action of the poem as a whole” (13).  Her article also analyzed how the axe symbolically alluded to biblical scripture. Walls stresses that other objects, like the girdle and the pentangle, are actively acknowledged by the poem’s author and points out that “the axe remains uninterpreted within the poem” (13). Walls’s analysis stresses that the axe is eye catching, vital to the plot and an iconic symbol.

Advocating the axe’s significance, Walls states that the Green Knight could have used “...a scythe (the normal attribute of Death), a king's sword, or a priest's knife…”, but instead used an axe (14).  The green knight offers it as a “gift” and it is literally hung up over Gawain’s head after it is used to behead the Green Knight, “but--metaphorically speaking--it hangs over Gawain throughout the poem” (Walls 13).  Walls also points out that The Green Knight is leaning on the axe as he explains the intricate details of the “game” Gawain had just played.

Walls referred to Joseph Longo, a critic, who suggested that the “axe alludes to the words of John the Baptist in Matthew 3.10” (14).  Walls agrees with Longo’s suggestion that “the axe would indeed have been recognizable to medieval readers as an allusion to Matthew 3.10” but argues “…Longo does not do justice to the question of its relevance to the poem as a whole” (14).  Walls succeeded where Longo failed, she stressed the parallels between John the Baptist’s warning in the scripture (which referred to an axe downing a tree or an axe leaning on or hanging from a tree) to the Green Knight’s first appearance in the poem (carrying an axe in one hand and a branch in the other) (14).

Walls provided adequate evidence that the axe governed the poem.  She also provided an interesting perspective pointing out how the poem may refer to a biblical scripture. Although an interesting point, I disagree with her evidence that supports a biblical parallel between the poem and scripture.  Walls’s argument relied on “Augustine's commentary on Matthew”, which is only an interpretation of the biblical text (15). It appears Walls is desperately searching for any biblical parallels she can find, which ultimately deterred my interest in the article.

Works Cited

Walls, Kathryn. "The Axe In "Sir Gawain And The Green Knight.." Anq 16.1 (2003): 13-18.

Academic Search Premier. Web. 17 Sept. 2012.