Customer Reviews

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (A New Verse Translation)

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(This review refers to the 2007 hardcover edition)
I read W.S. Merwin's (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) 2002 verse translation of this medieval poem, and so thoroughly enjoyed his rendering that I flagged it to read again. However, I heard good things about Armitage's translation, so bought it to add to my library. Figuring I'd read it someday, I flipped to the first page of the translation to see what it was like, and was immediately pulled into the narrative by the now familiar setup combined with Armitage's rich and accessible style. Being at work, I had to put it down, but I was reading it at home that night after everyone else was in bed.

The story is marvelous, and a side-by-side translation (my Faber and Faber edition is not) is preferred. Armitage strikes a gentle balance between contemporary, accessible verse and keeping the otherworldly feel of the original. I say 'otherworldly' in reference to how far removed we are from the time and culture in which the original was written. Armitage emulates the beat (and off-beats) of the original. He also uses alliteration much as in the original, and this added layer contributes much to the power of the text.

This story of chivalry, loyalty, fear, faith, doubt, and duty has a lot to say to our world. As with the Bible, a new and faithful translation can open up previously un-seen or unappreciated windows onto the landscape of a story. Armitage has added a new voice to an ancient tale, and I highly recommend it.

I've read a lot of translations of the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (I regularly teach it), and I thought that nobody could outdo the standard, quite wonderful version by Marie Borroff (also published by Norton). Well, I've just finished reading Simon Armitage's amazing translation, and I was wrong. Armitage's should be the new standard version used by students and lay readers everywhere. It captures both the energetic alliteration of the original and also its wonderful toggling between formal and colloquial registers. It does a magnificent job of approximating the galloping rhythm of the long verses, but is equally stunning at managing the "bob and wheel" that brings each long verse to comically neat closure (e.g., see Armitage's description of Gawain's emblem, the pentangle -- "[he] bore that badge on both / his shawl and shield alike. / A prince who talked the truth. A notable. A knight," ll.636-39). It takes some poetic chutzpah to fiddle with the Gawain-poet in this way. But Armitage has the versifying courage and the nervy tone just right. I think the 14th-century poet, whoever he was, would admire and appreciate this new version.

That's also because Armitage shows humility as a translator too when it matters. For example, he works hard to preserve the delicate moral ambiguities of the original poem. It's difficult to translate Gawain's refusal to give the seductress, the lady of the manor (where his humility, his loyalty and his self-control are tested) a token of his affection with the perfect blend of courtesy and self-regard that is there in the original ("Hit is not your honour to haf at this tyme / A glove for a garysoun of Gawaynes giftes," ll. 1806-07), but Armitage's "it strikes me as unseemly that you should receive / nothing greater than a glove as a keepsake from Gawain" hits the mark pretty well; by placing Gawain's reference to himself in the third-person at the end of the line, he makes us wonder if the hero isn't buying in a bit too easily to the reputation that has preceded him.

I'm not going to repeat the plot of the whole poem here; it's well known, easy to find online, and other amazon reviewers have gone over it. Armitage's confidence as a translator is expressed in his willingness to provide the original language of the poem on a facing page (Borroff's translation does not do this), so the reader can take a long look at the luscious original. Sure, he changes a word here or there (every translation does this), but Armitage is scrupulously true to the spirit of the original.

I fell in love with this romance in college. I've read a few translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in poetry and verse, and Armitage's is, hands down, the best. A former classmate from NYU called to recommend the text, reading passages aloud to me over the phone. This year I used the book with high school seniors, who loved it. Armitage employs the alliterative verse and bob and wheel characteristic of this medieval romance (the "bob" is a two-syllable word or phrase that introduces the "wheel," a quatrain that picks up its rhyme scheme from the bob). We made frequent use of the facing pages in middle English. I couldn't help rhapsodizing, repeatedly, about the beauty of the translation in my classroom. If I could give it more than five stars, I would.

This book was required for a British Literature class and the price was almost thirty dollars, complete ripoff! Looked on amazon (as I always do now for my college purchases) and it was less than half of that. Got the book in perfect time and it was just as I needed. I love that the story has page-by-page translations of old english to modern english, it made my homework so much easier. If you need this book I would highly recommend getting it here.

"This kyng lay at Camylot upon Krystmasse" or as Simon Armitage translates, "It was Christmas at Camelot - King Arthur's Court". Into the Christmas revelry at Camelot comes a mysterious Green Knight (almost completely green - skin, hair, armor and horse) with a challenge. He challenges any of the Knights of the Round Table to strike him a blow with a large ax he has and to be willing to receive a similar blow from him a year later. Gawain, Arthur's nephew eventually takes up the challenge and beheads the green knight. However, beheading doesn't keep a good Green Knight down as he picks up his now detached head and warns Gawain that he had better come to get his just desserts on the next New Year's day. We then follow Gawain as he sets out on a long and dangerous journey where his bravery, honesty and purity are challenged.
The original author of the poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is unknown but probably lived in the late 14th century. Although a contemporary of Chaucer, the use of language suggests he lived in the west Midlands or northwest of England. The poem is written in a primarily alliterative style of older Anglo Saxon poetry that was seeing a revival at the time but each stanza ends with five short rhyming lines.
Armitage, in his translation, makes the decision to not only follow the stylistic approach of the original but also to reflect the more northern character of the original work's language. The original poem is printed on one page with the translation on the facing page, making it easy to compare one with the other. Even to one with little knowledge of Medieval English, this reviewer for example, much of the original is comprehensible. It is a delight to be able to turn over the page from Armitage's translation and, automatically reading on the left page, continue for a few seconds in the original. However, there are many sections where the meaning of the original is incomprehensible due to words that simply no longer exist in modern usage.
In any translation but particularly in poetry, the translator is faced with remaining true to the original language while still imbuing the translation with the less tangible aspects of the writing that made it interesting or even exciting to its original audience. As Armitage says (p14): "Poetry is about manner as much as it is about matter" and his translation is highly successful in balancing manner and matter. His choice of keeping the basic style of the writing produces a work that is easy, interesting and fun to read. One can see from the parallel original that sometimes he veers significantly from the original text but usually to excellent effect and his attempt to retain the "northern " feel produces some fun lines. Here's a couple of example that show the alliteration and northern language:
179 "Wel gay was this gome gered in grene" becomes "the fellow in green was in fine fettle"
280 " berdles chylder" (beardless children) become " bum-fluffed bairns".
Along with some of the recent work of Robert Fagles on Homer and Virgil, this is a modern translation that remains essentially true to the original but produces a poem that gives a feel for the vitality and impact that it would have had on its original audience.

One new year a Green Knight interrupts the feasting at Camalot and challenges the assembly: this day he will stand still an receive one blow from any one of them with his axe. But the following new year the person who deals the blow must likewise stand still and receive a blow in return. Sir Gawain accepts the challenge and cleaves the Green Knights head from his body. The body promptly pick up the head, which reminds Gawain of his vow, and gallops off into the night.

Hence the following winter Gawain sets off to find the Green Knight and keep his bargain.

As with Heaney's Beowulf, Armitage's voice in this translation is recogniseably modern but rendered in the faithful service of the original poetry. Many of the descriptive passages of hunting are particularly memorable. There is also palpable tension in the finely drawn sequences when, towards the end of his quest, the wife of Gawain's host attempts his seduction.

All in all one of the most deeply satisfying books I have read in a long time. An e

This legendary tale is my favorite Arthurian story, and Armitage's translation is a wonderful and accessible read. Counter-facing archaic with modern pages and all attractively and simply presented. This story is one every boy should read for its adventure and imaginative value. A very worthwhile read!

It's Christmastime at Camelot and King Arthur and the whole court are enjoying themselves immensely. The revelry is just reaching its height when a giant green man carrying a spring of holly and a monster-sized battle-axe comes up to the feasting tables with an offer: Any of the knights are welcome to strike him down with his own axe, if they are willing to receive one stroke in return a year later. Nobody is interested in his rather dorky offer until the Green Knight insults the Camelot knights and Arthur picks up the axe in a moment of rage. Then Arthur's gallant nephew Gawain steps up and says that the king shouldn't stoop to such vengeance, so Gawain strikes the knight instead. Unfortunately, the Green Knight is not daunted by being beheaded. He simply picks up his head and declares that he'll wait a year to strike back at Gawain. Yikes.

I like how Gawain doesn't seem to take up the challenge for his own glory. He doesn't think too highly of himself and he's mainly concerned with keeping his uncle Arthur from dishonor. And it's hard not to pity Gawain when he's left with a kind of masochistic test of honor after the Green Knight leaves, because he has to hunt down the guy who is going to kill him, with no real clue about where he lives. Gawain does mess up his nice shiny goodness somewhat when he gets tangled up in some weird business involving honesty and a magical girdle, though.

The Green Knight is a puzzling character. I wouldn't have spotted this theme if the introduction hadn't mentioned it, but the Green Knight is often seen to represent nature. When I read about the Green Knight, I think of things like gangrene and rot, so I view the character as this nasty harbinger of death, but more people seem to lean toward viewing the Green Knight's challenge as relating to Man vs. Nature. But what does that tell us about nature? That it likes to insult people and mess with their heads? I think it's an imperfect correlation, though the nature theme is definitely there. Green is also the traditional color of fairies in older books, so the Green Knight might also represent how dangerous it is to meddle with the supernatural. He seems especially related to the Fair Folk when he insists on calling his violent bet a "game" and setting it up with specific rules like time limits. Even the later revelation about the Green Knight's identity doesn't really clear up much of the confusion and mystery surrounding him.

Random Subplot: In the early part of the story, one of the repeated concerns of the narrative is, "When will King Arthur get to eat his dinner?" Seriously, it's mentioned multiple times. We're told that Arthur won't eat until everyone is served, then the Christmas feast is described at length, but Arthur doesn't dig in because he has sworn that he won't have supper until someone tells a really good story or until there's some kind of single combat challenge. We're taunted with the possibility of eating again when the Green Knight enters the hall to the sound of fanfare "which might signal the king to sample his supper". But Arthur's meal is kept from him again as the Green Knight does his challenge thing. And when the beheaded green man rides off, what does our illustrious king say? "And at lest I'm allowed to eat at last, having witnessed such wonder, wouldn't you say?" Either the King of Camelot was a bit of a food nut, or the unknown author of Sir Gawain was very, very hungry at the time of writing.

Translation: I'd like to have a look at other translations of Sir Gawain, but I'm very well pleased with this one. Middle English is very intriguing because you can make out about half the words, but without some further training it's still hard to tell what's going on in a scene. That's the joy of the bilingual text--readers get to see a page of the Middle English across from a page of the Armitage translation. If you want absolute textual purity and faithfulness to the original, it's right there. If you want a readable poetic re-imagining of the lines, it's there, too. I'm not a fan of some of the translated lines ("the hubbub of their humor was heavenly to hear" seems kind of clunky) but most of them are absolutely grand ("Once the siege and assault of Troy had ceased").

Even the introductory notes to this book were great. I always try to pay attention to whatever the translators or foreword-writers have to say about the text, and in this case I learned something entirely new about poetry. I had known that Germanic poetry used alliteration as its main poetic trick, while French and Italian poetry used rhyme, but I never heard a good reason why. The note on Middle English meter says that Germanic poetry uses alliteration because the first syllables in Germanic languages are usually stressed, while in Romantic languages, the stress is often on later syllables, so Romantic poetry focuses on rhyme to highlight these end-sounds. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a special poem because it both alliterates and rhymes in some places, bridging the gap between Old English poetry (Beowulf) and the rhyming poetry introduced to England by the Norman Conquest.

To me, this version of the tale is accessible and beautiful to read. If you're curious about Medieval Lit or about Arthurian stories, Sir Gawain might be a good story to start with.

I was forced to read a Cliffs Notes version of Sir Gawain in High School. It bored me to tears. I got the full version on a lark and it is a great story. This book has bot the Middle English and modern translation on facing pages. It is an adventure to learn the Middle English well enough to read it. I quickly learned that the modern translation takes many liberties as if the translator tried to clean it up or civilize it. The original language is more raw, from the gut. I really enjoyed reading this book.

tHE BOOK ARRIV ED PROMPTLY IN THE CONDITION DESCRIBED AND AT A MOST AFFORDABLE PRICE. i AM DELIGHTED TO HAVE IT IN MY LIBRARY ONCE AGAIN.