Overwriting The LegendThe Green Knight as Cinematic Palimpsest

Authors : Serap Sarıbaş

Pages : 135-158

Doi:10.48131/jscs.1766208

View : 60 | Download : 217

Publication Date : 2025-12-27

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :This study evaluates The Green Knight (2021) in the context of cinematic palimpsest, focusing on mythic rewriting, the aesthetic rupture of temporality, and the fragmentation of subjectivity. Rather than functioning as a superficial adaptation of the 14th-century Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the film constitutes a visual-philosophical narrative in which temporal structure, spatial representation, heroism, and the experience of subjectivity are deconstructed and reconfigured through palimpsestic means. This analysis, grounded in Sarah Dillon’s theory of the “palimpsest,” is further supported by Gilles Deleuze’s notion of the time-image, Julia Kristeva’s theory of intertextuality, and Gérard Genette’s concept of hypertextuality. The study demonstrates that the film departs from linear narrative logic, adopting a cyclical and ethically indeterminate form, while portraying Gawain not as a coherent and stable subject, but as a fragile identity in a state of perpetual rewriting. The forest, castle, and chapel settings, together with the film’s visual and auditory aesthetic, not only construct dramatic atmosphere but also create a multilayered narrative plane in which ambiguity, vulnerability, and ethical tension are sensorially experienced. The Green Knight presents myth not as static and unified, but as open-ended, multivalent, and layered; and redefines heroism through failure and delay. Accordingly, the film reconceptualizes cultural memory not as a fixed transmission but as a dynamic realm of meaning constantly reconstituted through the viewer’s engagement. The palimpsestic structure of the film traces a multilayered memory on the visual-auditory level, re-opening both narrative forms and cultural representational regimes to transformative critical reflection.
Keywords : Mitin Yeniden Yazımı, Öznellik ve etik, Sinemasal palimpest, Zaman-imge, Yeşil Şövalye

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