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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Pearl; [and] Sir Orfeo

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Format: Mass Market Paperback

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Book Overview

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL, AND SIR ORFEO THREE MEDIEVAL ENGLISH POEMS, WITH TRANSLATION AND COMMENTARY BY J.R.R. TOLKIEN It's Christmas at Camelot and King Arthur won't begin to feast... This description may be from another edition of this product.
More by J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien (b. January 3rd, 1892 in Bloemfontain, South Africa--d. September 2nd, 1973) was an English author and poet most famous for the Lord of the Rings trilogy. He is also the author of The Hobbit and a literary criticism of Beowulf entitled Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics as well as ... Learn More About This Author

Customer Reviews

customer rating | review

Rated 5 stars
Borroff is the Best!

These are absolutely the best translations of the Gawain- (aka Pearl-) poet around. It's diabolically tricky to translate the Middle English of this obscure, anonymous poet, due to the fact that he combines the accentual, alliterative prosody of the native tradition with the rhythmic and rhyming verse of continental models. Of all the translators who have attempted it, Borroff by far provides an experience closest to reading...

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Rated 5 stars
One of the best

J.R.R. Tolkien is best known as a fantasy writer. But his lesser-known profession was that of an professor and linguist, working at Oxford for over three decade. These three translated poems are excellent examples of his non-Middle-Earth work."Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a relatively little-known Arthurian legend, in which the knight Sir Gawain must forfeit his life to a knight who allowed Gawain to behead him -- then...

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Rated 4 stars
Best modern translation

This book contains a reprint of Borroff's now standard translation, in addition to translations of two other middle English poems from the Gawain ms. Borroff has not only rendered Gawain into very readable modern English, but has also retained the alliterative lines of the original. Aside from the merits of this edition as a translation, Sir Gawain is one of the finest poems written in the English language. There are several...

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Rated 5 stars
The Most Metrical Translations in English

Between Tolkien's legendarium and scholarship fall his translations, which are by far the most regularly metrical translations in English. "Sir Gawain" includes 101 laisses or verse paragraphs of varying length, head-rhymed on the head-stave, each with an end-rhymed bob-and-wheel refrain; "Pearl" includes 101 12-line stanzas with regular (alternating) end-rhymes in addition to the head-rhymes, plus stanza-linking rhymes...

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Rated 5 stars
A Masterpiece of Literature

This book gets five stars because it contains "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" - not because Tolkien translated it (although that probably helps)"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is one of the masterpieces of the English language, one of those books we are asked to read in school over and over again (I personally read in in 12th grade AP English, my freshman year Arthurian legends class and Introduction to British Lit. my...

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Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo Mentions in Our Blog

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo in Poetry Through the Ages
Poetry Through the Ages
Published by Ashly Moore Sheldon • August 18, 2022

Poetry is one of the purest forms of expressing the human experience. It also offers a reflection of the era in which it was created. For National Poet’s Day on August 21, we celebrate the age-old artform with a tour of poetry through the ages.

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