Dev Patel in The Emerald bareback mountain I guess

Elke ridderroman die niet Ferguut is verdient een hoge rating❤

A captivating glimpse into medieval storytelling and into Arthur's Britain. This modern translation is the only one I've read, but I definitely am intrigued to try others to see how they compare. The writing here is absolutely beautiful.

Oh, I remember this game. My brother 12 or 13, me 6 or 7: he offers to let me hit him as hard as I can. And then it’s his turn. Fun.

The way of the Knight is to horse around with lots of bombastic games of violence and showing off and to kill every animal you can for sport; and to honor each other with longueurs of ‘marvelous words’ and ‘practiced methods of converse’ which get even more tedious when there’s a woman around; and to fuss and primp endlessly over helmets and breastplates and belts and ermine-fringed capes. Ugh. Chuckleheads.

Anyway . . . some nice similes and turns of phrase here, better than you might expect from such an old text, and of course the Green Knight and his green chapel are pretty fun. None of it touches The Mabinogion, though.

It was Christmas at Camelot

This review is of the translation, not the poem itself.

I've now read five translations of Gawain as well as tackling it in the original Middle English. Before tonight, I may have said Simon Armitage's effort was my favorite. It still ranks high, especially in its accessibility to a contemporary audience. That said, Weston's is by far the truest to the original, preserving the rhyme scheme, the bob and wheel technique, and the alliteration. It won't be easily approachable to the casual reader, as she retains many archaic and Middle English diction. In the first few pages we are treated to "trow," "ywis," "wroth," "eke," "emprise," and "hap." It wouldn't hurt to have a Middle English dictionary nearby, which of course I did because "NERD ALERT!"

I guess this should come as no surprise since Weston's best-known work is From Ritual to Romance, which--though it has had its detractors since its publication in 1920--inspired generations of artists and creations from T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land to Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

For those who teach or study early English literature or Arthurian legend or those who have more than a passing interest in it, this is a must-read. For everyone else, maybe just stick with Armitage.

this was absolutely wild tbh. i don't know WHAT to think of it but it sure was a ride. also all i could picture the green knight as was that green dude from like the green beans or whatever frozen vegetable it is, which definitely added a layer of hilarity to an already bizarre story

Chivalry, Gallantry, Loyalty, a knights most admired qualities, all are tested. An enjoyable story.

Much better than I was expecting, thanks, I suspect, mostly due to Marie Borroff's superb translation, which retained most of the amazing alliteration and a satisfying regular meter but without too many overly-cheesey "on the nose" rhymes. The story itself is fairly basic (unless you're majoring in fashion or hunting practices of the time), but I found it just a joy to read (best out loud!) and the notes at the end helped with understanding.

There's little I can say about this book, given that scholars like Tolkien have said more than I ever could. Suffice to say that it's one of my favourite books. Despite its 700 years, it has a psychological depth which still feels relevant. The folkloric elements give it a magical, otherworldly atmosphere, but it is also earthily grounded. Love it, love it, love it!

Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is certainly a very modern one. I think it's important to remember, when reading anything in translation, that nothing is immune to the translator's own views and intentions. This is especially apparent in translations like Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf, and this translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, but it's always the case. Even when it's a group of undergrads doing awkward prose translations -- I always use the example of Wulf and Eadwacer. There is no way you can translate that poem without personal interpretation. Even if you consciously translate the poem in order to keep all the ambiguities in place, that's an interpretation. Knowing this, and having read the introduction to this translation, it was easy for me to settle down and just enjoy Simon Armitage's translation. It's not literal, and it's colloquial, and it's contemporary, and it will probably quickly become dated. I don't think it's suitable for commenting on the poem in an academic context, unless you're actually commenting on the different translations, because it's very much an interpretation and in "plain English" and doesn't hold all the richness of the original.

It's also very readable, and rich in its own way. If you want to read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and you're daunted by the idea of the "Old English"*, this translation is great -- lively and, I think, playful. I enjoyed the language a lot, not least because of how very Yorkshire it is (I grew up in Yorkshire). Armitage makes a good attempt at using the alliterative metre, and the poem practically begs to be read aloud and savoured.

The story itself has become less and less important to me as I've read the poem in various different translations (Armitage's, Brian Stone's, a prose translation, the original...) and instead I've found myself focusing on the tone of the poem (is the narrator being ironic?) and details like the missing day (count 'em up carefully), and the use of adjectives ("good Gawain", etc). Still, there's an interesting story there, too -- the testing of Sir Gawain, a tension between courtly manners and Christianity, etc, etc.

*It's actually in Middle English, and all of the translations will be Modern English.

Second reading: A humorously subversive piece of Arthurian literature. As Gawain attempts to conform himself to competing virtues — chastity and courtesy, for example — so the poet pokes fun at the chivalric tradition. We have here a very self-aware author with an acute understanding of cultural irony. The content itself is ripe in religious syncretism and suitable for modern critiques. The language is lively and vivid.


First reading: This is perhaps one of the most interesting poems I have had the pleasure of reading. The wealth and confluence of religious and cultural themes is akin to the poetic richness and ideological depth of Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both authors acknowledge the influence of former traditions on their current literary culture, yet simultaneously present their work as transcending the past. In the same spirit, the Gawain Poet tips his hat to the ancients, explicitly referencing the role Homer and Virgil played in the founding of Britain but also modeling the protagonist’s wanderings after that of the classics. Similar to how St. Augustine models his Confessions after the classical pilgrimage trope but also deviates from the pagans in the Christian sense, so the Gawain poem follows suit. In other words, the Gawain poet, like St. Augustine, appropriates the classical journey motif and fashions it to his own culture.

Speaking of that culture, upon my original reading, I did not realize how significantly the Western spirit permeates this work. It is easy to get caught up in what is a paradoxically detail-oriented and grand poetic style — style comparable to the adventures sought in Tolkien’s Hobbit and Lewis’s Chronicles — and not see the author’s attention to transgression and forgiveness. I must admit, I loved the scenes of Jove and cheer at the dinner feasts, comparable to Beowulf and cronies in the mead hall. Nevertheless, Jackson says: “In the Middle Ages, every act of reading was a moral endeavor.” It is so with this poem. As Gawain strikes a seemingly divine contract with the Green Knight, he is faced with temptations to pride, lust, and the loss of his chivalric honor. But it so happens that the Green Knight grants him mercy, a mercy that he does not deserve because of his deception and attempted violation of his fate.