Who is Gawain?
Gawain is one of the most important knights of King Arthur’s Round Table, and in many tellings is the son of Morgause, nephew to Arthur and half-brother to Mordred, Arthur’s son. Scholars suggest the Gawain character comes from the Welsh tale, the Mabinogion, and its associated character, Gwalchmei. Early Arthurian legends, as told by Wolfram von Eschenbach in Parzival, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae and Chrétien de Troyes’ unfinished Perceval, mark Gawain as an important figure. Especially in the two Parzival tellings, which are Grail legends, Gawain is cast as the hero on the physical or profane quest, rather than the spiritual or sacred quest undertaken by Parzival.
