This is thought to be true because the techniques and vocabulary of regional dialect of the unknown author is that of Northwest Midlands, located between Shropshire and Lancashire.
The narrator/homilist begins by praising patience, setting it among eight virtues (which he calls blessings) or typically known as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-10 from the Sermon on the Mount, which he hears in mass one day.
The remainder of the work utilizes the story of Jonah as an exemplum which illustrates and justifies the admonition to accept the will of God patiently.
[3][4] Now held in the British Library, it has been dated to the late 14th century, so the poet was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, though it is highly unlikely that they ever met.
"[6] Although nothing explicitly suggests that all four poems are by the same poet, comparative analysis of dialect, verse form, and diction have pointed towards single-authorship.
As J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, after reviewing the text's allusions, style, and themes, concluded in 1925: He was a man of serious and devout mind, though not without humour; he had an interest in theology, and some knowledge of it, though an amateur knowledge perhaps, rather than a professional; he had Latin and French and was well enough read in French books, both romantic and instructive; but his home was in the West Midlands of England; so much his language shows, and his metre, and his scenery.[8]W.
A. Davenport commented: The Gawain-poet had a flair for vivid pictures and dramatic situations, and found intellectual delight in pattern: combinations of qualities provides much of the enjoyment of the poems, the conflict between them some uncertainty and complexity.
Four works were shaped by a man of subtle mind, interested in not just narrative and describing opportunities of his material, but in exploring its equivocal nature.
[9] He is known to have lived in the dialect region of the Pearl Poet and is thought to have written the poem, St. Erkenwald, which some scholars argue bears stylistic similarities to Gawain.