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Title: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by J. R. R. Tolkien, Terry Jones ISBN: 0-00-105373-6 Publisher: Harper Collins - UK Pub. Date: March, 2000 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 2 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.62 (13 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the best
Comment: J.R.R. Tolkien is best known as a fantasy writer. But his lesser-known profession was that of an professor and linguist, working at Oxford for over three decade. These three translated poems are excellent examples of his non-Middle-Earth work.
"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is a relatively little-known Arthurian legend, in which the knight Sir Gawain must forfeit his life to a knight who allowed Gawain to behead him -- then picked up his head and rode out. "Pearl" is a beautifully written, though somewhat more difficult to read, poem that chronicles the death of a child (possibly allegorical). "Sir Orfeo" is a version of the classic myth of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Tolkien's method for these works is unusually readable -- most translators sacrifice either readability or meaning; as far as I can tell, Tolkien sacrificed neither. "Sir Gawain" is probably the easiest translation I have come across; "Pearl" is haunting, laced with religious references, and very beautifully written; "Orfeo" is not so substantial as the first two, but still entertaining. It's a bit like a medieval ballad.
This book is not so much for fans of Middle-Earth, as for fans of all Tolkien's works. Beautifully written, highly recommended.
Rating: 5
Summary: supreme translations
Comment: Before he was known as the writer of the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, JRR Tolkien was an acclaimed translator, a deeply scholarly philologist, and a professor of the same at Oxford University. His love for language and his proficiency with Old English dialects is nowhere more evident than in these translations. The beautiful prose and poetry that flows easily from the lips will intrigue and delight even the lay reader. The accuracy and brilliance with which Tolkien sets down these words will make a fan out of any scholar. All told, these aren't of the same stock as Tolkien's fantasy novels, but they are a great find for scholars, Tolkien fans, and anyone else for that matter.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Most Metrical Translations in English
Comment: Between Tolkien's legendarium and scholarship fall his translations, which are by far the most regularly metrical translations in English. "Sir Gawain" includes 101 laisses or verse paragraphs of varying length, head-rhymed on the head-stave, each with an end-rhymed bob-and-wheel refrain; "Pearl" includes 101 12-line stanzas with regular (alternating) end-rhymes in addition to the head-rhymes, plus stanza-linking rhymes. Not even Professor Lehmann's Beowulf includes 101 bob-&-wheel refrains.
Tolkien's international reputation as a scholar began with his revival of "Sir Gawain" in the early '20s, and he developed these translations over the course of some 50 years. Scholarly consensus has held that "Sir Gawain" and "Pearl," the masterworks of the 14th-century Middle English alliterative-stave revival (standing in relation to Chaucer as Marlowe to Shakespeare), were composed by a West Midlands author whose name has not survived, the authentically bereaved father of the "Pearl" herself. Tolkien's "Gawain" lecture (published in The Monsters and the Critics) enlarges very helpfully on the early-'50s radio preface included in this volume.
"Sir Orfeo" is a mere frippery by comparison, in stichic ballad couplets, but probably originated as a single-author work as well. Admittedly there are more authoritative sources on the Classical myth of Orpheus and Eurydice than "Sir Orfeo," but that's part of the point: the Classical elements in these translations are real-life analogues of elvish/dwarvish influence in hobbit poetry.
Another translation of "Sir Gawain" had been added to the Oxford Anthology of English Literature by the time Tolkien's became the first posthumous edition released by his youngest son, and Tolkien's will probably replace the current translation at some point during the 21st century. Tolkien has been taken to task for failing to complete a proof that "Sir Gawain" is a single-author work (which he might conceivably have done, considering his 1934 achievement with Chaucer's "Reeve"), but his translation answers eminence with eloquence even so.
These works reflect a vibrant tradition of storytelling and minstrelsy, and the best way to read them would be to read each canto/stanza/couplet twice, once silently and once aloud; to which approach the prose paragraphs would recommend themselves as well. Tolkien's translations are associable with his other scholarly hobbies, including calligraphy, drawings and theatrical performances as well as prose fiction. Admirers of the verses in The Lord of the Rings will most likely find these translations well worth the substantially larger effort.
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Title: The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer ISBN: 0553210823 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 February, 1982 List Price(USD): $5.99 |
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Title: Beowulf: A New Verse Translation by Seamus Heaney ISBN: 0393320979 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: February, 2001 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Smith of Wootton Major & Farmer Giles of Ham by J.R.R. Tolkien ISBN: 0345336062 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 January, 1986 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Beowulf : A New Telling by Robert Nye ISBN: 0440905605 Publisher: Laure Leaf Pub. Date: 15 March, 1982 List Price(USD): $4.99 |
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Title: The Tolkien Reader by J.R.R. Tolkien ISBN: 0345345061 Publisher: Del Rey Pub. Date: 12 November, 1986 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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