Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

This edition collects J.R.R. Tolkien's acclaimed Modern English verse translations of three anonymous 14th-century Middle English poems: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo, edited by Christopher Tolkien.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a huge, green-skinned knight rides into King Arthur's court on New Year's Day and challenges any knight present to strike him with his axe, on condition that the striker seek him out in a year and a day to receive an equal blow in return.

Gawain accepts, beheads the Green Knight, and watches him pick up his own head and ride away laughing. The following year, Gawain sets out to keep his word, and along the way is tested three times by his temptations at a mysterious castle before facing his bargain at the Green Chapel.

Pearl is an elegy, likely written by the same unknown poet, in which a grieving father dreams of his dead infant daughter transformed into a jeweled maiden in a paradise garden. Sir Orfeo retells the story of Orpheus and Eurydice as a Breton lay set in medieval Britain. Tolkien's translations preserve the alliterative and rhyme schemes of the originals and are accompanied by his 1953 W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture on Sir Gawain.