In what ways is the narrator an interpreter?

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Option 2 (Borroff essay): In what ways is the narrator an interpreter?

Background.  Like Renoir, Marie Borroff can be considered a new critic.  A brilliant translator, she attends, in this essay, to descriptive passages as does Renoir, but she pays particular attention to the form of the poetry, and particularly to the syntax.  Did you have difficulty, when you read, understanding that the Knight was, himself, green?  Blame the Gawain-poet a bit; the poet does not use the word green or, for that matter, knight until well into the description.  See lines 126-220 and note what Borroff points out: that the word green is used late in the first stanza of the description and then repeatedly. (She preserves this structure in the translation.)  Boroff states that further, it is unclear if the stranger is a knight at all, given that he rides in without armor.  Borroff argues that the narrator is also an interpreter, choosing to present the green knight as admirable rather than simply scary or demonic, and doing so through the selective reporting of details, and through the judgments that the narrator makes, for example that the green knight is comely—that is, attractive—in form.

What to do.  Read Borroff’s essay and then choose a passage of description from some other part of the story, pointing out how the narrator appears to be an interpreter of the events as well.

In your essay, you will need to summarize relevant points from the Borroff essay in order to establish your own argument.  Use specific detail from Sir Gawain, including at the level of quotation, to support your argument.  See Reading and Writing about Literature for how to format and quote verse with line numbers in MLA citation.