Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
In Our Time13 Dec 2018

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

In a programme first broadcast in 2018, Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the jewels of medieval English poetry. It was written c1400 by an unknown poet and then was left hidden in private collections until the C19th when it emerged. It tells the story of a giant green knight who disrupts Christmas at Camelot, daring Gawain to cut off his head with an axe if he can do the same to Gawain the following year. Much to the surprise of Arthur's court, who were kicking the green head around, the decapitated body reaches for his head and rides off, leaving Gawain to face his promise and his apparently inevitable death the following Christmas.

The illustration above is ©British Library Board Cotton MS Nero A.x, article 3, ff.94v95

With

Laura Ashe Professor of English Literature at Worcester College, University of Oxford

Ad Putter Professor of Medieval English Literature at the University of Bristol

And

Simon Armitage Poet and Professor of Poetry at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford

Producer: Simon Tillotson

Avsnitt(1078)

Renaissance Maths

Renaissance Maths

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Renaissance Mathematics. As with so many areas of European thought, mathematics in the Renaissance was a question of recovering and, if you were very lucky, improving u...

2 Juni 200542min

The French Revolution's reign of terror

The French Revolution's reign of terror

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of terror during the French Revolution. On Monday September 10th 1792 The Times of London carried a story covering events in revolutionary France: "The street...

26 Maj 200541min

Beauty

Beauty

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss beauty and its qualities."Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."That was John Keats' emphatic finale to his Ode on a G...

19 Maj 200528min

Abelard and Heloise

Abelard and Heloise

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of Abelard and Heloise, a tale of literature and philosophy, theology and scandal, and above all love in the high Middle Ages. They were two of the greatest m...

5 Maj 200541min

Perception and the Senses

Perception and the Senses

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it. Barry Stein's laboratory at Wake Forest University in the United States found that the sha...

28 Apr 200528min

The Aeneid

The Aeneid

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'The Aeneid'. Out of the tragedy and destruction of the Trojan wars came a man heading West, his father on his back and his small son holding his hand. This isn't Odyss...

21 Apr 200541min

Archaeology and Imperialism

Archaeology and Imperialism

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the link between archaeology and imperialism. In 1842 a young English adventurer called Austen Henry Layard set out to excavate what he hoped were the remains of the bi...

14 Apr 200528min

Alfred and the Battle of Edington

Alfred and the Battle of Edington

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss King Alfred and the defeat of the Vikings at Battle of Edington. At the end of the 9th century the Vikings controlled almost all of what we now call England. Mercia had...

7 Apr 200542min

Populärt inom Historia

motiv
massmordarpodden
historiska-brott
p3-historia
historiepodden-se
olosta-mord
historianu-med-urban-lindstedt
rss-brottsligt
rss-massmordarpodden
rss-seriemordarpodden
konspirationsteorier
krigshistoriepodden
podme-bio-4
nu-blir-det-historia
rss-historien-om
vetenskapsradion-historia
militarhistoriepodden
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
rss-borgvattnets-hemligheter
rss-arkiv-stieg