Ywain and Gawain is an early-fourteenth century Middle English

Middle English

Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....

 Arthurian verse romance based quite closely upon the late-twelfth century Old French romance The Knight of the Lion

Yvain, the Knight of the Lion

Yvain, the Knight with the Lion is a romance by Chrétien de Troyes. It was probably written in the 1170s simultaneously with Lancelot, the Knight of the Cart, and includes several references to the action in that poem...

by Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes

Chrétien de Troyes was a French poet and trouvère who flourished in the late 12th century. Perhaps he named himself Christian of Troyes in contrast to the illustrious Rashi, also of Troyes...

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Manuscripts

The story of Ywain and Gawain is found in a single manuscript dating to the fifteenth century. There are no known printed versions prior to nineteenth and twentieth century transcriptions of this unique manuscript text. The story is told in a little over four thousand lines in rhyming couplets, condensing Chrétien's 6800 lines by concentrating upon the action of the story.

This unique survival is found in British Library MS Cotton Galba E ix., a manuscript without any illustrations and which dates to the early-fifteenth century.

External links

• Ywain and Gawain, from Sir Perceval of Galles and Ywain and Gawain, edited by Mary Flowers Braswell, Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995.