The masterpiece of late-14th-century Middle English alliterative verse — anonymous, surviving in a single manuscript (BL Cotton Nero A.x).
A faithful retelling for readers 8 and up — the whole poem, page by page. Illustrations to come.
Who does what — grouped by role, linked to the Fitts where they appear, and to one another.
The cast as a graph — every relationship in the poem, force-laid. Hover a node to light up its ties; click to open its card.
Drag/scroll/pinch to explore. Node size marks principals; colour marks role. Built straight from the relationship edges in the character cards.
The poem laid against Propp's 31 narrative functions — each beat linking to the Fitt that realises it.
Drag/scroll/pinch to explore; click a node to jump to its detail below.
The poem laid against Greimas's actantial model — the functional structure of wanting beneath the plot. Not the social web of who-knows-whom, but the single engine of desire: who wants what, who sends it, who aids and who blocks.
The poem by call-number — the Thompson Motif-Index and the ATU tale-types, the folklorists' Dewey decimal for mythic memes.
One graph, all the layers. The four Fitts run as a spine; characters, motifs, story-functions and oral type-scenes hang from the moments they touch, and the Object of desire is drawn toward the actants who want, aid and oppose it — whatever cross-cuts the poem is pulled to the centre. Toggle any layer on or off.
Fitts I–IV run as the gold spine. Hover a node to light its threads; click any node for detail. Toggle the layers above to isolate one kind of connection.