Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Review


Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by James Winny (170 pages)
My Rating: 5 Stars
Date Finished: 6 April 2015

Synopsis:
Original text along with facing-page translation.
The fourteenth-century poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is one of the greatest classics of English literature, but one of the least accessible to most twentieth-century readers. This new edition of the poem offers the original text together with a facing-page translation; editor James Winny provides a non-alliterative and sensitively literal rendering in modern English, as well as explanatory and textual notes, a further note on some words that present particular difficulties, and two contemporary stories, The Feast of Bricriu and the Knight of the Sword, which provide insight on the poem.

"This is the best translation of Sir Gawain. It... makes the remote world of Arthurian romance immediate to the reader." --Gordon Teskey, Cornell University

My Review:
I very much enjoyed this novel. Not only do I love Arthurian tales, I love ones with weird storylines. I really like how this was written by some unknown guy and was only recently rediscovered. (well recent-ish). This translation is great because it has the crazy Middle English along with the modern English translation on facing pages. This makes it easier to use both wordings to analyze. If you enjoy reading romantic/Arthurian stories, pick this one up! I am really glad I had to read this for one of my classes!

There is a lot of significance in the girdle that Sir Gawain gets from the court lady. Though the girdle in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated is originally portrayed as an ordinary piece of clothing of little worth, it turns out that it is more than meets the eye. With its actual properties being life-saving, this girdle goes beyond what it is described to be. It may be used in a devious manner by Sir Gawain tricking both the Green Knight and Lord Bertilak, but it is also a way to save Sir Gawain’s life. In this instance, his fear for his life overrides his duty to his honor as a knight of Camelot. In this passage, it is apparent that, like men and women who hide their true natures in their appearances, objects can do the same. The extraordinary actuality of what the girdle can do is not reflected in the ordinary appearance.

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