Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo (1975)

Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight comes with two more translations, one probably by the Gawain-poet, Pearl, and one by another anonymous poet, Sir Orfeo. I've said a lot about Sir Gawain in my reviews of other translations, so I'll keep my comments on this translation short. It's lovely and lyrical, as magical as one would expect, but it's less accessible than it could be. Tolkien didn't fully bring it into modern language. If that's your thing, then it's no barrier to enjoying the story -- but if you just want to enjoy the story, without worrying about language, Simon Armitage's translation might be more your thing.

I didn't like Pearl all that much. The language is lovely, and some of the imagery, but the subject matter isn't really my thing.

Sir Orfeo, however, filled me with glee. I'd never really heard/read about it before -- or I hadn't remembered, if I had. It's essentially a medieval version of Orpheus and Eurydice, transplanted from Thrace to Winchester. Tolkien's translation is readable and interesting, and while the poem isn't on the scale of Sir Gawain, it's enjoyable. ( )

Sir Gawain is a weird story, but Sir Orfeo is a cool story (the Middle English version of the myth of Orpheus), and Pearl is really good too. ( )

I wish I could assign this book to my students, because Tolkien's attempt to replicate the complex metrical forms of _Sir Gawain_ and _Pearl_ is extremely impressive. But the cover is a grotesque embarrassment...

Quite good translations of difficult medieval poetic metres and rhyme schemes. I wholly enjoyed Gawain, found Pearl a bit tedious (probably due to topic rather than language), and liked Sir Orfeo well enough. Would have preferred glosses to be provided at the foot of the page rather than at the back, but that's a minor quibble. ( )

Certainly well worth the expense to have 3 medieval classics in one volume. Tolkien's translations are far more than adequate, although his Sir Gawain is not, to my mind, as effective as Marie Boroff's, which appears in the Norton Anthology, beloved of college sophomores everywhere. The alliteration is a little too insistent and the meter is a little too regular for my taste. But that's coming from a person totally unqualified to make such judgments with any degree of credibility. I am amused, a little, by Tolkien's habit of introducing allusions to LOTR into his translation. Just one example: early in the poem, we find the line "Such a fole vpon folde, ne freke þat hym rydes." "Tolkien gives us "Such a mount on middle-earth, or man to ride him." "Folde" means, simply, "earth" or "the world". By saying "middle"-earth, Tolkien certainly adds another "m" to the alliteration, but, of course, also sets the poem directly in a terrain somewhere between the Shire and the land of the elves. ( )