Vol.2, No 7, 2000 pp. 129 - 150
UDC 820.09:291.13

---

GAWAIN: TRANSFORMATIONS OF AN ARCHETYPE
Lena Petrović
Faculty of Philosophy, Niš, Yugoslavia

---

Abstract. The origin of the Grail legend, as first suggested  by Jessie Weston and confirmed by the majority of anthropologists, is probably one of the numerous mystery cults coexisting with early Christianity, but condemned as heresies and driven underground when the Christian myth was established as a state religion. The complete version of this cult is lost to us but its fragments, scattered in various European and Oriental tales, point to a common source in the Bronze Age mythic complex involving the immortal Goddess and her consort, the ever-dying, ever-reborn god of vegetation. It is this ancient vegetative deity, concealed beneath a thin disguise of a Christian knight, that is incarnated in Gawain, the oldest, most primitive figure in the Arthurian romances, whose reputation as a ladies' man is a survival of his original role of the Champion of the Goddess. His numerous transformations - from the lover of the Goddess of the archaic fertility rituals, through the maidens' knight or alternately the Maiden's knight of medieval romance - include also the archetypal woman destroyer of Chaucer's "Wife of Bath's Tale" and thus anticipate Shakespeare's tragic heroes. Shakespeare's centrality to the western canon, it might be argued then, resides not in the thematic originality, but in a new, and still unsurpassed way, in which his plays re-articulate and transmit to us the forgotten wisdom of the earliest pagan myths.

---

GAVEJN: TRANSFORMACIJE JEDNOG ARHETIPA Početna pretpostavka u radu jeste teza Dž. Veston, prihvaćena od većine savremenih antropologa i književnih kritičara, da su likovi srednjevekovnih viteških romana u stvari u hrišćansko ruho prerušeni bogovi i boginje iz Keltskih rituala plodnosti. Autor dovodi u vezu Gavejna, po svom poreklu najprimitivnijeg od svih protagonista Arturijanskih priča, sa mitskim sinom i ljubavnikom Velike boginje, paganskim bogom sunca i vegetacije, da bi pratila način na koji transformacije ovog arhetipskog scenarija u najznačajnijim delima srednjevekovne književnosti beleže pokušaj redefinisanja odnosa hrišćanske asketske duhovnosti i paganske prirode. Uporedna analiza tri srednjevekovne priče u kojima je Gavejn glavna ili jedna od glavnih likova pokazuje da je, uprkos svesnim odstupanjima od prvobitnog arhetipskog obrasca, paganska simbolika, latentna u 'podsvesti' teksta, nezaobilazna i odlučujuća dimenzija tekstualnog značenja. Analogije izmedju junaka Čoserove 'Priče žene iz Bata'  i Šekspirovog Leonta koje uočava u zaključku rada, kao i činjenicu da Šekspirove teme prepoznajemo u ogromnom broju savremenih dela, autor tumači kao potvrdu stiha iz jedne pesme R. Grejvza posvećene Beloj boginji - naime, da uprkos neiscrpnoj raznolikosti književnih tema i oblika, 'Postoji jedna, i samo jedna priča' o svojevoljnom izgnanstvu iz prirodnog poretka i čežnji zapadnog čoveka da se vrati svom prvobitnom domu.