Jrbg posted:

You can take multiple explanations, one is that it would be a faux pas somehow and that Gawain is just so chivalric he couldn't possibly impute bad motivations on woman like Lady Bertilak (but then what explains his anti-woman rant at the end of Fitt V) ... the other is that he is himself tempted, and blames her later on for him being tempted. And that his conversations have to navigate a dangerous path in the way that usually when the knight rides forth he navigates, episodically, various dangers like a big boar or something.

Also consider the role of Lord Bertilak/The Green Knight in all this: he's shown to have known everything by the end. But the game relies upon a sort of pretence of not knowing where the kiss comes from, or indeed that a kiss would come. The whole thing ends up being a narrative scenario to enable a man to kiss both a married man and a married woman, in a sexual way. (Also think about how these scenes are interspersed with Bertilak catching his prey)

The basic thing is that exploring sex is basically encoded into the Arthurian romance. Taboo sex is there in none-Arthurian romances and Marie de France's lais, but there's a reason the Victorians got super into the legend, and it's because it was a sanctioned way of talking about sex. Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere. SGGK comes to prominence after though you could argue its fame is due to similar things. SGGK is about courtesy, yes, but also about temptation--there is always temptation, and the most perfect people can yield to it.

And also think about narrative complexity of the poem, it's because it requires almost but not quite getting the whole picture every time you read it. These are stories to be read, remembered and repeated, presumably in a collective setting.