Ralph Elliott Publishes Essay on Green Chapel Location

On the 21st of May, 1958, medievalist Ralph Elliott published his essay, "Sir Gawain in Staffordshire: A Detective Essay in Literary Geography," in the London Times. It was the first attempt by a literary scholar to situate locations from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in real-world geography.  He would later follow up this article with a book, The Gawain Country: Essays on the Topography of Middle English Alliterative Poetry, in 1984 and another essay, "Holes and Caves in the Gawain Country," in 1988. Although many scholars have since published their own theories surrounding the poem's geography, it nonetheless remains the seminal work on the topic, setting the precedent for all future scholarship.