Episode Reviews

A great episode on a very strange Arthurian tale. I remembered the outline of the story and some of the themes from my university medieval studies course, but this goes into the story in quite a bit more depth.As well as getting into the details of the narrative and the expectations of how knightly characters should behave based on the prevailing chivalric culture, some time is spent on how the Middle English it was written in is quite different from that of Chaucer, even though it was written at roughly the same time (I love languages and accents, so I found this part particularly fascinating). Host John McCoy and guest Dr Sarah Ifft Decker also do a great job of conveying the humour common in medieval art and also present in this poem. This, along with the In Our Time episode from 2018 and an episode of The History of English Podcast on this story, would make an excellent primer for watching David Lowery's film adaptation, The Green Knight, starring Dev Patel as Sir Gawain.