Sir Guido and the Green Light:Confession in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Inferno XXVII

Abstract

WThe puzzling – if not paradoxical – nature of Sir Gawain's confession in stanza 75 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, while object of debate and commentary for many years in Gawain criticism, can be understood if considered in light of a Dantean analogue found in Inferno's Canto XXVII – that is, the encounter between Dante and Guido da Montefeltro. What makes this analogue pertinent to Gawain's confession is the virtual "green light" or license Pope Boniface the VIII gives Montefeltro by absolving him from sin he is about to commit. Such absolution before the fact is exactly the issue inherent in Gawain's court confession and request for absolution before breaking his pledged oath to his host. While circumstances in which Guido and Gawain find themselves differ markedly, both engage, in other words, in false confession. This action, one that allows Guido to counsel that promises be broken and one that is demonstrated by Gawain as he breaks his promise, is evoked by strikingly similar imagery and themes in the two works. These parallels between Gawain's confession and the revelation of Guido's deceit call attention to the idea of the defective will, the kind that invalidates confession and predisposes its exemplars to mortal sin and its dire consequences.