The Green Knight

            On Wednesday morning I worked out the chords for the first verse of “Privé" by Serge Gainsbourg and some of the bridge. 

            Before 11:00 I went onto the U of T Blackboard website to skim a couple of the recordings of the Canadian Literature lectures to hear how my voice sounds when I speak in my microphone. The professor had complained on Tuesday that my mic was noisy and it really was at first. It sounded fine later I think because I’d pushed the jack in. I did all this checking because I was about to log on to my British Literature tutorial and I wanted to make sure I didn't have any major problem with my mic.

            I think my mic is fine but the problem is that it’s not designed to be plugged in to a computer and so I have to insert the bigger jack into an adaptor with a smaller jack. But the mic has the kind of long, heavy cord that a performance mic tends to have, which weighs down on the adaptor jack, causing it possibly wiggle out. I decided to use my camera tripod to prop up the mic cord near the input so the jack won’t be tilted down while it’s in my computer. 

            Before the tutorial started I raised my hand and asked Alexandra if my mic was okay. She said she could hear me fine. 

            Alexandra told us that for next week we would be reading Chaucer in the original Middle English with no translation and so she warned us that it might be challenging. 

            Since there were a few more students in the class that hadn’t been with us last week, Alexandra put us into small groups again. I was with Cassandra and another young woman but I mostly talked with Cassandra because she takes French as a Second Language as a minor. I told her that I dropped that minor because it was dragging down my GPA. I guessed correctly that she came to FSL from French immersion in secondary school. She said she’s already completed the fourth year of FSL and is now doing translations. Then we were cut off as tutorial started. Alexandra apologized to us all because Blackboard controls the timer and so she can’t gently ask us to end our conversations. 

            We talked about the lais of Marie de France and the role of gift giving in the stories. 

            I said the gifts tend to either be symbolic or else vehicles for carrying symbols like the swan in Milun. 

            Someone said that the Demoiselle’s secret love is treated like a gift. 

            I said that Lanval is not as rich as the other knights and so he is left out of the social custom of gift exchange in King Arthur’s court. 

            We were asked to give our thoughts on the role of secrecy in the stories. 

            I said that secrecy can be a secret scheme as in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight but I’d forgotten that we were supposed to be focusing on Marie’s lais. 

            Secrecy can be an extension of power. Marie talks about how the old stories are deliberately obscure. 

            We were asked if Marie is writing about contemporary issues. 

            I said that she’s expressing a romantic ideal but also showing how they can go wrong. She's saying there is a distance between the time she is writing about and her own. 

            We were asked about the portrayal of women and I said that the only nice woman in Lanval isn’t even human, but rather a fairy. 

            In Milun the leading lady has no name and she has to keep all of the best things in her life a secret. 

            I suggested that the appreciation of beauty was perhaps incompatible with the Christian ideals of the time. 

            We moved on to talking about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Alexandra asked for ideas about the Green Knight. 

            I said he is larger than life. 

            On the significance of the colour green I pointed out that since the story takes place at Christmas then green is an important festive colour. It’s meant to stand in contrast to the winter white and so it’s ironic that the Green Knight would be both pleasant in hue and menacing in his countenance. 

            I said that Christmas is a time for games and the Green Knight comes insisting that he has not come as a threat but rather to play a game. There’s another irony in that his game is life threatening.

            Arthur won’t eat until a story is told to him and then suddenly a real live story takes place, after which they eat. He does say to Gawain that this will be a story to tell. 

            Is this a Christian world? 

            I pointed out that Gawain keeps the image of the Virgin Mary on the inside of his shield and so perhaps she represents his ideal woman. 

            Someone pointed out that it’s winter and although the Green Knight is elaborately clothes otherwise he is barefoot. 

            I said the way he is described he is like a big human Christmas tree. 

            So far I’m finding Early British Literature far more interesting than Early Canadian Literature.

            For lunch I had Triscuits with cheddar. 

            I spent a few hours getting caught up on transcribing my lecture notes and updating my journal.

            For dinner I had two pork sausage patties on a toasted bagel while watching The Count of Monte Cristo. 

            In this story set in 1835 the count is hunting with the king of France when he sees someone try to assassinate Louis from behind a tree. He pushed the king down and the shot misses. He catches the shooter. Later we learn that Duchess Dubarry, the king’s niece is angry over the attempt because she had wanted her uncle deposed in a peaceful coup. Minister of the Interior Thiers, who is the leader behind the plot however has the duchess arrested for planning an attempted assassination of the king. It had been Thiers’s plan all along to make Dubarry the scapegoat. When the king hears that his niece was behind it he does not believe it. He wants to talk with the assassin but Thiers tells him he is dead. He asks to speak with his niece but he is informed that the Privy Counsel has ordered her execution at sundown. Even the king cannot officially rule against the Privy Counsel and so he calls for the count. The count and his friends ride to Bligh fortress and get in way too easily for realism as usual. They fight a few guards and escape with the duchess but the count is shot in the shoulder as they are riding away. As the soldiers give chase the count leads them away from the duchess and then doubles back. They are trying to get out of France but find roadblocks everywhere. The duchess tells the count who is really behind the plot and that she has a list of all of the conspirators to prove it. They decide that their best bet is not to leave France but try to get to the king to inform him. They make it back to Paris by overwhelming one of the camps of soldiers and forcing their commander to escort them. A letter is sent with Commandant Sevier, one of the conspirators, to the king, accompanied by Mario to make sure it is delivered. But when the count, his friends and the duchess arrive at the count’s chateau, Thiers and his men are there waiting for them. Thiers informs them that all correspondence to the king goes through his office. He thinks he has outsmarted the count but then the king arrives to reveal that the count had sent Mario directly to him to convey the contents of the letter. The duchess is allowed to get off with exile to Italy. 

            Duchess Duberry was played by Susan Cummings, who delivered the line “It’s a cookbook!" in the Twilight Zone episode, "To Serve Man".