Author(s): J.R.R. Tolkien (Translator)

Poetry

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" 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.