Abstract

Apparent structural symmetries have long been noted in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. But Donald Howard's view of the symmetrical structure of the poem describes parallels between parts 2 and 4 and parts 3 and 4, and Kent Hieatt and Hans Käsmann describe symmetries within part 3, which seem to leave the first part of the poem a mere introduction. Is it not odd that the poet who achieved the degree of structural balance evident in the twenty sections and 101 stanzas of Pearl should have produced the same number of stanzas in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but divided them into sections of 21, 24, 34, and 22 stanzas? The last long line of the poem, line 2525, underlines the symbolic importance of the number five in it; and when the poet has made an effort to relate the form of the work as a whole in this way to one of its motifs — the pentangle — are we not right to expect a greater degree of structural balance between the four sections?