Tricked into a liaison with the Fisher King's daughter Elaine, he becomes the father of Galahad, the Grail winner, and, as a result of the queen's jealous anger at his relations with the lady, goes mad, and remains an exile from the court for some years.
Most of those studies of home-life in England, which formed so highly popular a section of Tennyson's work - such as "The Gardener's Daughter," "Walking to the Mail," and "The Lord of Burleigh" - were now first issued, and, in what we have grown to consider a much higher order, "Locksley Hall," "Ulysses," and "Sir Galahad."
It is not improbable that it represents a free and individual working over of the original Fescamp version, and that in its later shape it was intended to form, and did at one time form, the Quest section of the cyclic redaction of the Arthurian prose romances, being dislodged from this position by the Galahad Quese.
There is good ground for believing that as Grail quester and winner, Gawain preceded alike Perceval and Galahad, and that the solution of the mysterious Grail problem is to be sought rather in the tales connected with the older hero than in those devoted to the glorification of the younger knights.
A knightly celibate, his stainless life, his ardour, caused him to be termed a Yankee Galahad; a pure and simple heart was laid bare to those who loved him in " My Psalm," " My Triumph " and " An Autograph."
