English Literature / Unit 5 ENL 0405 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Gawain: Pentangle, Bob and Wheel
Captions available
The idea
Gawain's shield bears a pentangle, an endless knot whose five points stand for his virtues. The poem is in four fitts of unrhymed alliterative lines, each stanza closing with a rhymed bob and wheel. The anchor reads its frame of Troy as a warning of corruption from within.
In practice
An endless knot, an alliterative stanza.
Where people slip
The girdle marks where the knot fails.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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