“Gawain” or “Gawain’t”

Abstract

This study offers a computational and quantitative analysis of the long-standing ambiguity debated by scholars in the medieval alliterative romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Drawing on corpus processing and data visualization techniques, I use specialized self-written Python programs to process Middle English textual data to participate in existing discussions surrounding the salvific uncertainties of the poem by analyzing its stylometric features.

I quantify the count and spread patterns of word occurrences in the text to reveal wording and phrasing patterns that concretely shape and chart the poem’s narrative development and elusive message at the end. Particular attention was devoted to sorting out the words that fall into the categories of religion and emotion, and discovering the lexical distribution of such words in the narrative to clarify the thematic tension of Gawain’s eventual salvation, supporting it with data-driven insights that offer a digital perspective on this perennial ambiguity.

By quantifying stylistic choices and recurring words, phrases, and motifs, I uncover and foreground verbal elements that align with, testify to, or complicate scholarly readings to cast light on the poem’s final scenes and the ambiguous tones accompanying Gawain’s return to Camelot. Grounded in literary scholarship but exploratory in its use of computation, this study demonstrates how digital tools can extend critical inquiry to the interpretive uncertainty that defines Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

Keywords: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; authorship; salvation; ambiguity