Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo
by:
J.R.R. Tolkien (translator)
This book presents 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 and the...
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This book presents 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 and the Green Knight" 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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ISBN:
9780048210395 (0048210390)
Publish date: 1979
Publisher: Unwin
Edition language: English
First a few facts to get out of the way. This is not an original work by Tolkien, but rather his translation of three poems written in Middle English in the 13th century. The poems are all taken from the same Medieval document and are written in the same hand writing, but it is likely a copyist's ha...
This middle English poem is said by some to be the greatest poem of Middle English literature, however it does have to compete with The Canterbury Tales for that title, something that I am not going to go into since I have not have the chance to read Chaucer's work at this stage. However while the e...
bookshelves: radio-4, poetry, summer-2011 Read from July 07 to 10, 2011 This is a program explaining the poem and manuscript art blurb - 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' is one of the landmarks of medieval English literature and we know of it because a small manuscript survived from the 14th ce...
Didn't care for the Pearl much; too religious for my taste. But the other two were really nice. The appendix is quite useful and informative. You'd do well to read it before the actual poems. All in all, a great work from Tolkien, as always.
This is a program explaining the poem and manuscript art - http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b012fbkb/Pearl/blurb - 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight' is one of the landmarks of medieval English literature and we know of it because a small manuscript survived from the 14th century. Now catalogued ...
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