The Green Knight: History, Myth, and Modern Shame -- A Historian's View
Historiansplaining: A historian tells you why everything you know is wrong
Sir Gawaine and the Green Knight
In the mediaeval version of the story, at least as it survives in this poem from the fourteenth century, honor is very its something very expansive and its person as well as social. There is no necessary divide there. In the modern world, there has been a shift towards a certain sort of individualism, which tends to cast society's judgments as always tyrannical and repressive - that each person can only truly understand himself or herself internally. It's rather awkward for the final note of the story to be camelot, this embodiment of society, of social standards,. reaffirming the th of the hero and celebrating him even when he internally feels ashamed.
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