Poetry
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Pearl Poet (Gawain Poet) · 1390
Opening lines
Siþen þe sege & þe assaut wat3 sesed at Troye,
Þe bor3 brittened & brent to bronde3 & aske3,
Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wro3t,
Wat3 tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe;
Since the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy,
The city broken and burnt to brands and ashes,
The man who there had wrought the plots of treason
Was tried for his treachery, the truest on earth;
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
On New Year's Day, at Arthur's court, a man rides into the banqueting hall: he is green from head to foot, on a green horse, a holly branch in one hand and an axe in the other. He proposes a game. Let someone take his axe and strike him, on condition of receiving the same blow in a year and a day. No one moves and the king finally rises. Gawain then asks the favour of taking his uncle's place, and the axe.
Context
The poem survives in a single manuscript, copied around 1400, together with three other poems attributed to the same author. The volume passed from a Yorkshire library to that of Robert Cotton, whose collection was given to the nation, and in 1731 it escaped the fire that scorched, in the same library, the unique manuscript of the oldest English epic. It remained unpublished until 1839; Tolkien, whom this catalogue carries, and E. V. Gordon produced a scholarly edition of it in 1925, in Leeds. The alliterative verse it uses was a regional form: the court of London, at the same time, wrote in rhymed verse.
Who it is for
Two thousand five hundred lines in regional Middle English; several French translations, including a bilingual paperback edition.
Prizes and reception
On the syllabus of the 2024 agrégation in English; two new French translations appeared in 2024 and in 2026.
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