Courtly Site » Literature https://courtlysite.eu Sun, 20 Jul 2014 23:05:38 +0000 en-US hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.2 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Translated by J. R. R. Tolkien, read by Terry Jones https://courtlysite.eu/?p=178&utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=sir-gawain-and-the-green-knight-translated-by-j-r-r-tolkien-read-by-terry-jones https://courtlysite.eu/?p=178#comments Thu, 01 May 2014 14:34:48 +0000 https://courtlysite.eu/?p=178 A collection of three medieval English poems, translated by Tolkien for the modern-day reader and containing romance, tragedy, love, sex and honour. Read by Terry Jones. The unabridged version length is 4.5 hours, and can be purchased here.
[excerpt↓]

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are two poems by an unknown author written in about 1400.
Sir Gawain is a romance, a fairy-tale for adults, full of life and colour; but it is also much more than this, being at the same time a powerful moral tale which examines religious and social values.
Pearl is apparently an elegy on the death of a child, a poem pervaded with a sense of great personal loss: but, like Gawain it is also a sophisticated and moving debate on much less tangible matters.
Sir Orfeo is a slighter romance, belonging to an earlier and different tradition. It was a special favourite of Tolkien’s.
Read modernized versions of translations:
Gawain by A. S. Kline in PDF or azw3, mobi, ePub (zip file).
Pearl by Bill Stanton.
The Tale of Sir Orfeo

Featured image by ©Sascha Duensing http://sirius-sdz.deviantart.com/

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