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Full Description
This book innovatively combines medieval manuscript study with contemporary cultural game theory to show how the Middle English romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight launches a multidimensional game with its late-fourteenth-century elite reader.
The reading games within Sir Gawain and the Green Knight extend to the layout of the poem as found in its one extant manuscript, London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero A X/2. This study offers a more comprehensive examination of games and gaming in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the manuscript as a whole, its four poems and its illustrations, than has been published to date.
Reading, before printed editions, was an activity that involved interacting with the visual layout of the text on the page. The authors find that a medieval reader's ludic interaction with this singular medieval codex could amuse but also serve as a means to serious ends, specifically redemptive knowledge. Couch and Bell conclude that the textual and visual games of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Cotton Nero manuscript allow a fourteenth-century English Christian aristocracy to align courtly gaming with heavenly goals, thereby justifying elite amusements.
Contents
List of Figures
List of Abbreviations
Citation Notes
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Gaming the Medieval English Text
1. The Text Game: The Gamemaster of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
2. The Bobs Game: The Ordinatio of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
3. The Salvation Game: Ludic Reading in Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience
4. The Image Game: Gaming the Illustrations
Conclusion: The Elite Game of Reading
Appendices: Playing with the Bobs
Bibliography
Notes on Authors
Index
