The Beheading Game in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Green Helmet

The Beheading Game in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Green Helmet

本論文並置中世紀傳奇《高文爵士與綠衣騎士》及二十世紀劇作《綠盔》兩個不同作品，檢視當中民間傳說常見斷頭遊戲之功能。本文擴展巴洛斯（J. A. Burrows）對《高文爵士與綠衣騎士》的分析，並依據弗萊（Northrop Frye）《批評的解析》提出的五種虛構類型，集中討論這兩個作品的文類特異性。本文也引進近代理論概念如「上帝遊戲」作為對弗萊的補充，進一步檢視兩位作者延伸自文類本身的目的與限制的藝術手法，並將之應用於古愛爾蘭民間傳說的原型形態學。本文企圖展現此一民間傳統常見的母題，如何有助形塑《高文爵士與綠衣騎士》為一融合騎士精神、基督教精神及後設傳奇的文本，在葉慈的情況則形塑成一則國族主義及英雄式的神話劇作。

Juxtaposing two different works, the medieval romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (SGGK ) and the twentieth-century play The Green Helmet, this essay examines the functions of the folkloric beheading game. Expanding on J. A. Burrow’s analysis of SGGK, the essay will focus on genre-specific idiosyncrasies of SGGK and The Green Helmet based on the five fictional modes developed by Northrop Frye in his Anatomy of Criticism. Complementing Frye’s model with newer theoretical concepts, such as for example that of godgame, this paper will proceed to examine the artistic goals of the authors arising from the purposes and constraints of the two genres. It will then apply these purposes and constrains to the archetypal morphological functions united by the old Irish folktale. Its ultimate goal is to demonstrate the ways in which the folk motif helps create a chivalric, Christian, and meta-romantic text in the case of SGGK and a nationalistic, heroic myth-play in the case of W.B. Yeats’s work.