PAPER Topics

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Women, Courtly Love and the Creation Myth in t t, a great epic written in fourteenth century Europe by the Pearl poet, emphasizes the opposition of Christian love to Courtly love in the 13th century through the dilemma of Sir Gawain, one of the ....

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... of Eden. Gawain’s temptation correlates to the temptation of Adam, which is rooted in the sins of the flesh. The women in the story seem to accentuate the downfall of Gawain, which mirrors the downfall of Arthur’s court, as well as man’s fall from grace in the garden. Originally, the first duty of a knight was to be at the service of his church. However, with the rise of courtly love, knights began to give their devotion to their mistress rather than God. This elevated the church’s mistrust of women and the flesh. The characterization of Bertilak’s wife is not unlike that of Eve, a temptress who would b ...