The Historical Arthur And The Gawain Poet

The Historical Arthur and The Gawain Poet: Studies on Arthurian and Other Traditions delves into the origins of Arthur and reveals the author of the famous Gawain Manuscript. Its first part contains evidence for the Arthur of film and legend as a real person, a Celtic commander (not a king) who fought battles in North Britain during the terrible volcanic winter of 536-7, before dying a hero's death in a conflict on Hadrian's Wall. Its second part moves on to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, an Arthurian poem on magic, near-death, and near-seduction. Its author has always been unknown, but Dr. Breeze uses arguments of the US scholar Ann W. Astell to date the text to 1387 and name the poet as Sir John Stanley (d. 1414), a Cheshire and Lancashire grandee. He can now be recognized as an artist of genius, comparable to Chaucer himself. What is said in this book on John Stanley and his circle thus allows the greatest advance in Arthurian Studies since 1934, when Walter Oakeshott discovered the Winchester Malory amongst manuscripts of an English school library.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a masterpiece of medieval English literature and one of the finest Arthurian tales in any language. Though its ingenious plotting and verbal artistry continue to dazzle readers, it is written in a challenging regional dialect and uses many words that were already archaic when the poem was written in the late fourteenth century. This edition is designed to make the poem, in its original Middle English, accessible to students and general readers. Following standards adopted for editing other Middle English poets, the edition lightly normalizes spellings to make words more recognizable for a modern audience. Extensive marginal glossing of difficult words, thorough on-page explanatory notes, and a comprehensive glossary offer further support for readers. The historical appendices include other examples of medieval romance from France and Britain.

Featuring both the original text and a modern, translated version, this fourteenth-century Arthurian poem tells the legendary tale of the mysterious Green Knight and Sir Gawain, a great knight of the Round Table. The knights of the Round Table are celebrating Yuletide when their festivities are interrupted by the mystifying Green Knight riding on his green horse. The Green Knight challenges King Arthur’s legendary men to a wager. He who takes a blow at the Green Knight must be prepared to accept a return attack one year and one day later. It is the gallant Sir Gawain who takes this challenge on. He raises his axe and strikes off the head of the Green Knight. Yet, the intruder is undefeated. Still alive, he picks up his head, and promises he will see Sir Gawain in a year and a day. In stanzas of alliterative verse ending in a rhyming bob and wheel, the poem chronicles Sir Gawain’s heroic quest. This high-quality edition features both William Allan Neilson’s 1917 translated text and the original version by the anonymous writer, known as the ‘Pearl Poet’ or the ‘Gawain Poet’. Ragged Hand has proudly republished this classic poem in a beautiful new edition, complete with an introduction by K. G. T. Webster. This volume is not to be missed by fans of the famous legend of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table.

It ends with a discussion of the reception of the Morte Darthur from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries, and a select bibliography.

Chrysanthemum loves her name, until she starts going to school and the other children make fun of it.

It is New Year at Camelot and a mysterious green knight appears at King Arthur’s court. Challenging the knights of the Round Table to a Christmas game, he offers his splendid axe as a prize to whoever is brave enough to behead him with just one strike. The condition is that his challenger must seek him out in a year and a day to have the deed returned. Sir Gawain accepts and decapitates the stranger, only to see him pick up his head, walk out of the hall and ride away on his horse. Now Gawain must complete his part of the bargain, search for his foe and confront what seems his doom... Michael Smith’s translation of this magnificent Arthurian romance draws on his intimate experience of the North West of England and his knowledge of mediaeval history, culture and architecture. He takes us back to the original poetic form of the manuscript and brings it alive for a modern audience, while revealing the poem’s historic and literary context. The book is beautifully illustrated throughout with detailed recreations of the illuminated lettering in the original manuscript and the author’s own linocut prints, each meticulously researched for contemporary accuracy. This is an exciting new edition that will appeal both to students of the Gawain-poet and the general reader alike.

One of the earliest great stories of English literature after ?Beowulf?, ?Sir Gawain? is the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts King Arthur's Round Table festivities one Yuletide, challenging the knights to a wager. Simon Armitrage, one of Britain's leading poets, has produced an inventive and groundbreaking translation that " helps] liberate ?Gawain ?from academia" (?Sunday Telegraph?).

The late 14th century produced a crop of brilliant writers: Chaucer, Langland and Gower. Their achievement was rivalled only by a series of four works generally agreed to have been written by a single northern author, known as the Gawain-Poet. This book introduces the reader to the Gawain-poet's four surviving works: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, Pearl and Cleanness. The four poems are made accessible to the student by setting them in their relevant historical and cultural context and by developing some lines of critical argument. All studies are based on the author's own research and translations.

In An Introduction to the Gawain Poet, John Bowers surveys an expanded selection of the works of Chaucer's anonymous contemporary, considering Sir Gawain and the Green Knight alongside the poet's lesser known but no less brilliant works. In addition to his succinct introductions and plot summaries, Bowers skillfully details the cultural, historical, political, and religious contexts for these works, synthesizing them with close reading of selected passages. Perhaps his most exciting contribution to the field is his choice to historicize the poet's life and works in the context of the royal culture of King Richard II, boldly contending that it was highly possible the Gawain Poet was a frequent visitor to Richard's court in London. The final chapter surveys the works influenced by, as well as the influences reflected in, the poet's work, from the Bible to The Lord of the Rings. The attention Bowers pays to the critical tradition that has developed around these texts over the past hundred years makes An Introduction to the Gawain Poet an ideal volume for both undergraduate students and scholars of the Gawain Poet. Bowers has marshaled his formidable skills to create a book impressive in its balanced combination of breadth and depth.