The narrator poet ofSir Gawain and the Green Knightdescribes the significance of the pentangle painted on Gawain’s shield directly to the audience as part of a character portrait. It is typical in medieval narrative poetry for the narrator to give a physical description of characters and to use...
29 In order to develop this predatory aspect of Grendel’s character, the poet draws on various traditional associations of one of the most feared members of the animal kingdom, and the perennial enemy of the deer: the wolf.30 3. Wolf The characterisation of Grendel and his mother is ...