Kinney, who will teach the poem in a few weeks in the large survey on “History of Literatures in English, Part 1,” emphasized the poem’s visual quality in a 2013 UVA Today interview.
“If the Gawain poet were living today, he would be writing screenplays or he’d be a great cinematographer, because of the visual sense, the point of view, the use of perspective,” Kinney said then.
“There’s an amazing moment when Gawain is keeping his promise, is receiving what he thinks is the blow of the axe that is going to decapitate him, but the Green Knight only gives him the tiniest nick on the neck, and you can see from Gawain’s point of view a little drop of blood falling on the snow in front of him.”
This summer’s film doesn’t show this scene, however, and emphasizes the poem’s more mysterious side, she and the others said.