Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, second edition

by J.R.R. Tolkien, E. V. Gordon (Editor ), Norman Davis (Editor )

1952. Reprinted. 211 pages. No dust jacket. Green cloth. Black and white illustrated frontispiece. Binding remains firm. Pages have light tanning and foxing throughout. Water staining to some pages, text remains unaffected. Previous owner's inscriptions to endpapers and rear pastedown. Heavy marginalia, underlining, and other annotations. Boards have light shelf-wear with corner bumping. Slight crushing to spine ends. Faint water marks overall.

Genres: Fantasy, Fiction, Poetry, Classics, Arthurian

Paperback

First published January 1, 1925

About the author

John Ronald Reuel Tolkien: writer, artist, scholar, linguist. Known to millions around the world as the author of The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien spent most of his life teaching at the University of Oxford where he was a distinguished academic in the fields of Old and Middle English and Old Norse. His creativity, confined to his spare time, found its outlet in fantasy works, stories for children, poetry, illustration and invented languages and alphabets.

Tolkien’s most popular works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings are set in Middle-earth, an imagined world with strangely familiar settings inhabited by ancient and extraordinary peoples. Through this secondary world Tolkien writes perceptively of universal human concerns – love and loss, courage and betrayal, humility and pride – giving his books a wide and enduring appeal.

Tolkien was an accomplished amateur artist who painted for pleasure and relaxation. He excelled at landscapes and often drew inspiration from his own stories. He illustrated many scenes from The Silmarillion, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, sometimes drawing or painting as he was writing in order to visualize the imagined scene more clearly.

Tolkien was a professor at the Universities of Leeds and Oxford for almost forty years, teaching Old and Middle English, as well as Old Norse and Gothic. His illuminating lectures on works such as the Old English epic poem, Beowulf, illustrate his deep knowledge of ancient languages and at the same time provide new insights into peoples and legends from a remote past.

Tolkien was born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in 1892 to English parents. He came to England aged three and was brought up in and around Birmingham. He graduated from the University of Oxford in 1915 and saw active service in France during the First World War before being invalided home. After the war he pursued an academic career teaching Old and Middle English. Alongside his professional work, he invented his own languages and began to create what he called a mythology for England; it was this ‘legendarium’ that he would work on throughout his life. But his literary work did not start and end with Middle-earth, he also wrote poetry, children’s stories and fairy tales for adults. He died in 1973 and is buried in Oxford where he spent most of his adult life.

Reviews

[Ripley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read it for my Arthurian class! Really reveals what the misogyny and roles of women were for that time period.

[Eleanor · Rating 4 out of 5]

We bought this translation at Powell’s for Eli’s birthday and he read it out loud tonight :)

[Olive Graham · Rating 5 out of 5]

This slayed but was NOT the translation I have to read 😭 guess I'm rereading it

[Cheryl]

I guess I'll stick to Augie and the Green Knight. I'm too old to learn how to read this sort of epic poetry (balladry? I dunno). Handsel, sendal, tissue of Toulouse, all on one page???

September 2024

[Dexter · Rating 3 out of 5]

The middle of the story, I prefer the book, but the ending… I prefer the movie by a lot. All in all, if I could, I’d just watch the movie and call it a day.

[Helena · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun, easy to read chivalric romance.

[Jenna Jewel]

Had to read for school. Technically I used spark notes for most of it, but I did read some and I’m counting it because I do know the storyline and want to give myself credit for that. hehe

[Teachmycat2read Podcast · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read Various translations as part of our podcast, full review here:

https://teachingmycattoread.wordpress...

[Pradhyum R · Rating 4 out of 5]

I chose to read this to learn about Arthurian legend (for another book I'm reading in class). This is a beautiful translation but it's very hard to read... my mind defaulted to Latin mode where I have to jump around to find the subject, object, and modifiers of each word. The translation in alliterative style was cool.

As for the actual text, it feels very ethereal; from the title itself, I expected, well, Gawain and the Green Knight, but for a large part of the middle two sections, other than Gawain's anxiety, we don't see it; knights are supposed to fight, and woo women, and go on adventures, and instead, Gawain's sitting in a castle, day after day! And we're used to stories where knights are chivalrous, but this story hinges on a moral failing. It has the characteristics of a story that ties to one's own life: something looming in the distance, the tension between being a good person and giving in, how staying still is a struggle in and of itself.

And the writing style is wonderful. Gawain experiencing the passing of the year and his travel to the forest in winter are the most lyrical sections I've read in a while.

[Kate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tolkien’s translation of Gawain is beautiful.
I can’t believe I’ve never read it before. It is engaging and accessible while capturing the feel of the original through his brilliant alliteration. Highly highly recommend

As for his treatment of the second poem in this volume, Pearl (from the same folio and likely the same author), I cannot speak to it. I’m marking this book as finished because I have no intention of reading the second poem any time soon. It’s subject matter, the death of a beloved daughter, is too painful (especially following the professor’s brilliant introduction in which he makes a convincing argument that we are to read this as inspired by the death of an actually existing daughter under the age of two).

[Jacob Shoup · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even with Tolkien it just didn't quite connect with me. I couldn't feel the rhythm or rhyming schemes, and a lot of the minor plot points seemed arbitrary. That wouldn't normally be a problem, but when looking at mythology I really want the motivations and minor details to correlate to each other in some way. For example, why did the Green Knight even test Gawain, and why wait a year to do so? I'm sure there are reasonable explanations, but it didn't read very well to me.

What did read very well, is the concept of Chivalry. That was beautifully depicted, and is something we could probably use a little more of in today's society.

[Mendez · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was unprepared for this poem, and the prose contained therein, yet, by the end, I was enraptured.
A simple contest during Christmastime leads to a riveting study of a knights’ honor and courtesy, which in turn, offers us a small window into 14th English poetry, and the importance of their values.
A story told with many levels, it’s inspired me to slightly re-evaluate how tightly my morals retrain me.

[Jonathan Grant · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting, didn't realize it was a collection of old English alliterative verse translated by Tolkien. Keen to see the new Green Knight movie now to see what they did with the story.

[Audra Souder · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good story, poetry is not my favorite format to read, but the story was engaging and I wanted to keep reading for the sake of the story.

[Stefen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I spent more time learning how to read this book than actually reading it. Good book though, very fun to read out loud

[Moony Lupin · Rating 3 out of 5]

hey, look at that, I didn't hate this one with a burning passion! thats a step up, I suppose. Third book for ch 2

[Georgie]

well detailed notes

[Flannery · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever read for school and I love it so much.

[Bradley Odoms · Rating 4 out of 5]

Would give a 4.5 but I can't

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

This 14th century poem written in Middle English is still difficult to read in this modern translation. There are dozens of archaic or obsolete words and meanings, and the often contorted word order leads to hard to understand sentence structure. So it takes real effort to get through. This makes me somewhat anxious to recommend this. But for those who are willing to work and have some interest in medieval literature, what you get is an otherworldly, courtly morality tale with some genuinely fine poetry at times, though not throughout. Whether this is sufficient payoff for the work is hard to say--it was just about for me, but others may find it different.

[shannon moore · Rating 4 out of 5]

what a cool piece of literature history! for it's age and mystery, this was a really cool narrative. super complex themes, author was clearly ahead of his time.

first read of 2024 and of my semester in galway! for a medieval literature class, which i think will be my favorite. excited to anaylze this further!! and to rewatch the a24 version with the god that is dev patel, from my memory i think it's an interesting adaptation.

[Guillermina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The end annoyed me. still fail to see what supposedly Gawain did wrong.
eta: the movie sucks. DON'T BOTHER WITH IT.

[Art · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had not heard of alliterative poetry until I read this. It was really cool. The story of Sir Gawain was one worth reading (or listening to). The other two poems made interesting listening as well.