Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198114869 ISBN 13: 9780198114864

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1925

Synopsis

Preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, composed by an anonymous master, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was rediscovered only two hundred years ago, and published for the first time in 1839. One of the earliest great stories of English literature after Beowulf, the poem narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. Next Yuletide Gawain dutifully sets forth … His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dream-like castle, a dire challenge answered — and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing.Simon Armitage’s new version is meticulously responsive to the tact and sophistication of the original — but equally succeeds in its powerfully persuasive ambition to be read as an original new poem. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two northern poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscapes — acoustic, physical and metaphorical — in the course of which the Gawain poet has finally found his true and long-awaited translator.

About this title

About the Author

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien CBE (1892-1973) is best known as the author of The Hobbit and its sequel The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor of Anglo-Saxon language at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, and of English language and literature, also at Oxford, from 1945 to 1959.

From the Back Cover

The study of Sir Gawain, the finest of all the English medieval romances, was signally advanced by the publication in 1925 of the edition by the late Professors Tolkien and Gordon. This remained the most widely used text of the poem; but after forty years the time came for revision.

The new edition pursues the aim of the first--to present an accurate text pleasantly, with sufficient apparatus to enable a reader to understand the rich but difficult language, and so to reach for himself an informed appreciation of the poem. The text, and the uniquely full glossary, were revised to take account of recent views. The Introduction, Notes, and Linguistic Appendix were largely rewritten; and the book was entirely reset.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1925
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198114869
• ISBN 13: 9780198114864
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 2
• Number of pages: 262
• Editor: Tolkien J. R. R.