Metrical Studies and the Editing of <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>

This essay urges a fuller integration of metrical studies with editorial methodologies in the study of <i>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</i>, so that we move away from the situation whereby the former body of knowledge is taken always as a corrective to the latter. First, line 68 'Debated busyly aboute þo giftes', where, despite its metrical acceptability, lexicography and the <i>usus auctori</i> show that 'aboute' belongs to the a-verse; missing 'bifore' is postulated after the caesura. Second, consideration of line-terminal -e (or absence thereof) in 2147, 2186 (both 'chapel(le)'), and 965/1822 ('for gode') leads to the conclusion that the unusual orthography of the rhymed lines is authorial. Third, '"Mary," quoþ þat oþer mon' (1942a / 2140a) brings us to the limit of what metrical studies can do, given that neither Russom's 'mon oþer' nor Inoue's metrical demotion of 'mon' can work. Perhaps the 'quoþ' formula was considered extra-metrical, leading us away from metrical studies as the way to understand the metre here.