Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle

Wajih Ayed (University of Sousse)

Ed. by Natalie Hanna, University of Liverpool, Sebastian Sobecki, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.2.1.02: English Writing and Culture: High and Late Medieval, 1066-1485.
Vol. editors: Kate Ash-Irisarri (University of Edinburgh), Rory Critten (Université de Lausanne), David Fuller (University of Durham), Natalie Hanna (University of Liverpool), Hugh Magennis (Queen's University Belfast), Jamie McKinstry (University of Durham), Sarah Peverley (University of Liverpool), Sebastian Sobecki (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

Dates

First circulation or publication c. 1400

Places

England (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Poetry (any)

Resources

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Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle

(henceforth,

Carlisle

) is a late medieval popular verse romance which was probably composed in the northwest of England around 1400 and copied by an anonymous scribe in the second half of the fifteenth century (Hahn 83; Kurvinen 28).

Carlisle

survives in a single manuscript witness, Brogyntyn MS ii.1, kept in the National Library of Wales. The poem is 660 lines long, and it is composed in tail-rhyme stanzas, with a generally regular rhyme scheme of

aab ccb ddb eeb

. This Arthurian romance exists in another variant text, namely

The Carle of Carlisle

(henceforth,

Carle

), a 500-line sixteenth-century poem composed in rhyming couplets and preserved in the mid-seventeenth-century Percy Folio, now in the British Library (Rogers 204; Hahn 374). The plotline of…

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3184 words

Citation: Ayed, Wajih. "Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 07 May 2021 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=39394, accessed 22 November 2024.]

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Anonymous, Sir Gawain and the Carl of Carlisle

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