Resolving Cultural Conflict In Arthurian Literature

issolving Cultural Conflict with Research on Arthurian Literature

Motivation: Dissolving Cultural Conflict

Worrying about cultural conflict and attempting to prove the value of academic research to the society, I aim to research on cultural issues in hope of finding out the reasons behind the social opposition and dissolving the conflict with their hidden commonality. Starting from connecting the East to the West, I hope our society can be more open-minded to foreign cultures, willing to learn more about Western cultures instead of merely their languages, and value the training from the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature which helps students understand the Western philosophy, the cross-cultural issues and study the Western culture

Aside from having undertaken two research papers on Arthurian literature since my senior year, I am planning my future research with the application of post-structuralism and

To observe how the East-West intersection takes place and finds the possibility of the East “overpowering” the West, I started my research “Challenging the Western World in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” by focusing on the Green Knight’s intrusion to discuss how the Eastern Green Knight challenges and manipulates the Western Arthurian court.

Identifying Queen Guinevere’s authority in the Western chivalry and goddess Morgan Le Fay’s superiority in Eastern religion, I justified Morgan Le Fay’s intention to scare Guinevere as an Eastern cultural challenge. Additionally, to understand how the Green Knight effectively lures Arthur’s court into his challenge, I examined his challenge in both physical and verbal perspectives. With physical traits like his gigantic figure and unnatural greenness, the Green Knight reinforces Arthurian court’s fear by verbally challenging Arthur’s authority and emphasizing the violence in the Christmas game. Triggering Arthur and Gawain’s desire to eliminate the threat, the Green Knight baits the court to turn the “peaceful” Christmas game into a life-threatening beheading game, intensifying the impact of the cultural