Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: With Pearl and Sir Orfeo

By HarperCollins UK

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: May 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9780007375929

Reviews for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

[darthdeverell · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Though by Tolkien, this book is largely academic, and is the Professor's translation of three middle English poems from the west of Britain around the same time that Chaucer wrote. Chaucer used the dialect of London and the elite and so was better remembered. The author of the three poems used a different dialect that was subsumed by Chaucer's dialect. The translations are eminently readable and readers can easily see these poems' influence on Tolkien's later work.

[altheaann · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This slim volume, put together by Christopher Tolkien, collects three translations done by J.R.R. of 14th-century British poems, together with writings by Tolkien Sr. on the poetry.

'Gawain and the Green Knight' is the classic, and not surprisingly, the best. Originally written in an alliterative style, Tolkien reflects that style in his translation, but the verse-form is such that it is not distracting to the story - it's very readable.
The story is, of course, that of one of Arthur's knights who agrees to a (rather foolish contest) with a strange, fey knight of mysterious powers. Bound by his word to seek out the knight (and, undoubtedly, his own death) the next year, he wanders in search of the knight and his appointed meeting - but encounters the hospitality of a merry lord and his all-too-seductive wife....

'Pearl' didn't do it for me, I have to admit. The narrator encounters the ghost of his dead daughter, who tells him, at great length, about how the dead are with god and the living have to accept it, blah blah blah religious dogma blah blah.

'Sir Orfeo,' however, is a very interesting poem, especially considering how old it is. It's a very intentional 'updating' of the legend of Orpheus and Eurydice, making the characters a British lady, and her lord, who seeks her when she has been taken under the hill by Faerie. Pretty cool that we can see that in the 14th century, people were adapting stories to their own mythologies (as they've always done, of course)

[nebula21-1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first two poems in this book are by an unknown author written around 1400.I liked Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The translation had a great narrative and the quality of the original poetry was clear. I found Pearl incomprehensible in places and was put off by the amount of religious dialogue and dogma.Sir Orfeo is an earlier poem but like Sir Gawain it has a clear and compelling narrative.The rhyming nature of the poem is quite charming,as is the fairytale theme.

[shanaqui_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight comes with two more translations, one probably by the Gawain-poet, Pearl, and one by another anonymous poet, Sir Orfeo. I've said a lot about Sir Gawain in my reviews of other translations, so I'll keep my comments on this translation short. It's lovely and lyrical, as magical as one would expect, but it's less accessible than it could be. Tolkien didn't fully bring it into modern language. If that's your thing, then it's no barrier to enjoying the story -- but if you just want to enjoy the story, without worrying about language, Simon Armitage's translation might be more your thing.

I didn't like Pearl all that much. The language is lovely, and some of the imagery, but the subject matter isn't really my thing.

Sir Orfeo, however, filled me with glee. I'd never really heard/read about it before -- or I hadn't remembered, if I had. It's essentially a medieval version of Orpheus and Eurydice, transplanted from Thrace to Winchester. Tolkien's translation is readable and interesting, and while the poem isn't on the scale of Sir Gawain, it's enjoyable.

[cdddddd · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sir Gawain is a weird story, but Sir Orfeo is a cool story (the Middle English version of the myth of Orpheus), and Pearl is really good too.

[klai_78 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Quite good translations of difficult medieval poetic metres and rhyme schemes. I wholly enjoyed Gawain, found Pearl a bit tedious (probably due to topic rather than language), and liked Sir Orfeo well enough. Would have preferred glosses to be provided at the foot of the page rather than at the back, but that's a minor quibble.

[jburlinson_3 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Certainly well worth the expense to have 3 medieval classics in one volume. Tolkien's translations are far more than adequate, although his Sir Gawain is not, to my mind, as effective as Marie Boroff's, which appears in the Norton Anthology, beloved of college sophomores everywhere. The alliteration is a little to insistent and the meter is a little to regular for my taste. But that's coming from a person totally unqualified to make such judgments with any degree of credibility. I am amused, a little, by Tolkien's habit of introducing allusions to LOTR into his translation. Just one example: early in the poem, we find the line "Such a fole vpon folde, ne freke þat hym rydes." "Tolkien gives us "Such a mount on middle-earth, or rman to ride him." "Folde" means, simply, "earth" or "the world". By saying "middle"-earth, Tolkien certainly adds another "m" to the alliteration, but, of course, also sets the poem directly in a terrain somewhere between the Shire and the land of the elves.

[jen6e6moore · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm mostly here for Sir Gawain; Pearl is very much medieval theology, and thus interesting primarily for academic reasons, and Sir Orfeo is an interesting retelling of Orpheus set in England with faeries but of that style of poetry that's liable to put you to sleep if you don't pay close attention. The Sir Gawain, however, is fantastic, and if you can parse the deep language of academia, the translation notes are rather enlightening on medieval English styles of poetry.