Wissen von Gawain

Abstract With the narratological concept of a literary character existing only within the literary text, medieval literary characters pose a problem as they often appear in several texts that sometimes depict very different versions of them. Looking at King Arthur’s nephew Gawain as a character very much afflicted by this, the article suggests an approach to character that sees every single text drawing from an always-growing amount of collective knowledge about the character. Assuming that the perception of each version of the character is influenced by knowledge about the other versions, this approach sees the emergence of a complex character in medieval literature as a process that goes beyond any one single text.