Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

While reading through Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in middle English, I began to notice that the language really adds to the overall feel of the text. One thing that you got to see in the middle English version that was not present in the normal version was the rhyming that took place. The lines has a very significant rhyme scheme and this allowed more focus on the meaning of the words and it also made it flow much easier. The language also allowed for the story to seem much more poetic and it all sounded better in my opinion. However, the middle english was difficult to read and it made the story a lot less enjoyable because it took longer to read and comprehend.

Overall, Sir Gawain is one of my favorite pieces of literature, and reading the middle english version allowed me to appreciate it in an entirely new sense. Middle English is still hard to understand and it took a lot of time and effort to decode it all, but reading this version definitely allowed me to learn a lot about the story as a whole and really gives the reader a sense of what time period this actually came from. It gives us some historical context behind the piece, which allowed me to appreciate it more and even get a sense of what these people were like at the time and put more faces into the story. Although it is fictional, reading it in the language that it was first created allowed me to picture the way it was written and appreciate it on a whole separate level.

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