Game and ritual in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Many critics have studied either games or rituals in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but none have combined the two. Johan Huizinga proposed that game and ritual are aspects of the same sort of behavior, and this theory can be applied successfully to SGGK. Play, game, and ritual form a spectrum of activity which is defined by an increase or decrease in rules, competition, and personal choice. People of the Middle Ages were aware of this blending; the practices of pilgrimage, tournament, vows, and feasting contain both game and ritual elements.

The structure of SGGK is that of an initiation ritual carried out through games. Acting as equal partners, the Green Knight and Morgan le Fey have created a series of games by which to test the worth of Gawain, who becomes symbolic of the moral order of the Round Table. Gawain successfully negotiates the merely physical part of his ordeal by winning his way to Castle Hautdesert, and by arriving on schedule at the Green Chapel to receive the return blow. But in the moral test, which is the Green Knight's creation, Gawain is found "lacking a little." Gawain meets all the criteria of the "limnal" individual or neophyte, as described in The Ritual Process by Victor Turner, except for one slip. By accepting the green girdle he breaks the rules of the exchange game and compromises the unspoken passivity required of the initiate.

The games in SGGK are used to carry out a covert ritual, and their purpose remains unknown to both Gawain and the reader until the end of the poem. Gawain returns to Camelot reconfirmed in identity and personal value.