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Product Description
Review
‘The introduction to Gawain is a little masterpiece.’
Times Higher Educational Supplement
‘This magnificent Arthurian tale of love, sex, honour, social tact, personal integrity and folk-magic is one of the greatest and most approachable narrative poems in the language. Tolkien’s version makes it come triumphantly alive, a moving and consoling elegy.’
Birmingham Post
Product Description
A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are two poems by an unknown author written in about 1400. Sir Gawain is a romance, a fairy-tale for adults, full of life and colour; but it is also much more than this, being at the same time a powerful moral tale which examines religious and social values.
Pearl is apparently an elegy on the death of a child, a poem pervaded with a sense of great personal loss: but, like Gawain it is also a sophisticated and moving debate on much less tangible matters.
Sir Orfeo is a slighter romance, belonging to an earlier and different tradition. It was a special favourite of Tolkien’s.
The three translations represent the complete rhyme and alliterative schemes of the originals.
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First Sentence
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are both contained in the same unique manuscript, which is now in the British Museum. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are both contained in the same unique manuscript, which is now in the British Museum. Read the first page
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Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
13 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I had previously spent rather a lot of money on a splendid Folio Society edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in a translation by Simon Armitage. It is a very fine edition, a beautiful artifact, but the translation is a bit too folksy and demotic. Armitage is a man of his time, and his modern vernacular style jars with ancient poem. The Tolkien version, which I ordered on the recommendation of my friend and colleague Dan Hannan, and which I am reviewing, is as different as chalk from cheese. Physically, it's no more than an ordinary little paperback. But unlike Armitage, Tolkien is by no means a man of his time. He is a man of a very different time, and his glorious language suits the period and the ambience of the poem. It gives a real feeling, a real insight into the mediaeval text. Nothing jars, nothing feels out of place. Toklein's rendering is a triumph and a delight, and while I shall value the Folio edition as an object, I shall prefer the Tolkien as literature.
5 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a well balanced and very readable account of three Romances, 'translated' from the Middle English. Although I would have liked to have had the original verses for comparison, that is not the purpose of the book and their absence does not detract from its nature or purpose. I found the glossary of particular interest, and the Appendix illustrating verse forms useful in emphasising the continued use of alliteration, a legacy perhaps from old English verse. Altogether a most satisfying read from the Tolkien stable, and excellent value.
9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I must clarify that "A Reader" is incorrect in stating that King Orfeo's daughter is kidnapped, rather it was his wife. "Sir Orfeo" is based on the classical myth of Orpheus and Euridice, where the characters are renamed by the anonymous poet as Orfeo and Heurodis. This Breton Lay has a decidedly happier ending than the classic version. This lay is heavily Christianized, but the Celtic elements also present render it a complex and sophisticated poem, difficult to pin down in a single interpretation. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is perhaps the best Middle English work, but "Sir Orfeo" is a close second. I am pleased with Tolkein's translation, which is faithful to the Auchinleck Manuscript (as far as I can tell, it doesn't say in my copy of the book which MS it is based on).
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