I'm not sure whether this is a conventional interpretation, but I always understood the Green Knight as a Christ figure -- appears at Christmas, dies and is resurrected, and forgives Gawain's sins. You can can tack on additional elements of allegory -- Gawain, previously sinless, sins by taking a gift from a woman that will protect him from death, making the girdle a stand-in for the apple given by Eve to Adam.
Of course, this coexists with the pagan structure in which Bertilak is an otherworldly nature figure, rather than replacing it.
In response to "Crocheting the Hypperbolic Plane": isn't there a poem with the line,
"Children, leave that string alone" ?
Erik Nelson-
From way, way back in this thread, you're thinking of Robert Graves' Warning to Children.
Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string....
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