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(1077)

Republicanism

Republicanism

Melvyn Bragg examines how English republicanism has developed from Cromwell to the present day. Before the French Revolution, before the American Declaration of Independence, before Rousseau, Thomas P...

3 Feb 200028min

Economic Rights

Economic Rights

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss economic rights. Is democracy the truest conduit of capitalism, or do the forces that make us rich run counter to the democratic institutions that safeguard our rights?...

27 Jan 200027min

Masculinity in Literature

Masculinity in Literature

Melvyn Bragg investigates masculinity in literature. Ernest Hemingway wrote in The Old Man and the Sea, “A man can be destroyed but not defeated”. In a time when traditional male roles have been syste...

20 Jan 200028min

Information Technology

Information Technology

Melvyn Bragg discusses the social and economic consequences of the information revolution. There are now more than 200 million people connected to the internet world-wide. The world’s biggest ever mer...

13 Jan 200027min

Climate Change

Climate Change

Melvyn Bragg discusses climate change. In 1999 the weather gave the planet’s occupants a terrible beating: 16,000 people lost their lives as a result of storms. Some 15 million people were left homele...

6 Jan 200027min

Time

Time

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. At the end of the 19th century, H.G.Wells imagined travelling through time in The Time Machine; “The ...

30 Dec 199928min

Prayer

Prayer

Melvyn Bragg examines the purpose and effects of prayer. Why do people pray? What did prayer ever do, the cry goes up, for those millions upon millions of non-combatants, civilians, children, innocent...

23 Dec 199928min

Medical Ethics

Medical Ethics

Melvyn Bragg examines the technological advances and ethics of modern medicine. On an average working day about three quarters of a million of us go to the doctor’s. About a hundred thousand are visit...

16 Dec 199927min

Populärt inom Historia

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