Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/32

xx marry. The poet was well informed of the worldly life of noblemen, and if he was a priest, might well have been chaplain in a nobleman’s household, or himself of noble birth and polite education. In Sir Gawain he shows detailed and even technical knowledge of hunting; of the service of a nobleman's household; of the latest castle architecture of the time; of the armour and gear of a knight. In Patience he uses readily enough the right terms for the parts of a ship. He has plenty of book learning too: we know that we read the Latin of the Vulgaate, in Purity he cites Clopingel’s Roman de la Rose, and has clearly availed himself of the French text of Mandeville’s Travels. Sir Gawain illustrates further his reading of French. Perhaps the only safe conclusion to be drawn about the poet form his poems is that he was a man of learning and genius.

Sir Gawain cannot be dated precisely. An attempt has been made to date it from a supposed connexion with the Order of the Garter; but such a connexion is very doubtful, and even if it were admitted it would prove only that the poem was composed after, the probably date of the Order’s foundation. Costume, armour, and architecture described in the poem point to a date towards the end of the fourteenth century. They show the love of elaborate decoration which marks the later Middle Ages—the end of the fourteenth and the fifteenth century. More precisely the details