Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: (Hackett Classics)

A dazzling recreation of the most memorable Middle English poem, and one that captures the original alliterative verse in all its dimensions: sense, sound, and rhythm. --Ad Putter, Professor of Medieval English Literature, University of Bristol

About the Author :
Joseph Glaser is Professor Emeritus of English, Western Kentucky University. His Canterbury Tales in Modern Verse and Middle English Poetry in Modern Verse are also published by Hackett. Christine Chism is Associate Professor of English, University of California, Los Angeles.

Review :
Accurate, poetic, and masterly, Joseph Glaser's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight captures and replicates with brio the craftsmanship of the English romancer known as the Gawain-poet. A brilliant Introduction by medievalist and romance expert Christine Chism invites readers' engagement with the text in addition to presenting reliable and up-to-date scholarly information about the work, its anonymous author, and its historical milieu. A finely executed and thought-provoking undergraduate edition of this medieval masterpiece. --Jordi Sánchez-Martí, Department of English Philology, University of Alicante [A] great book of really useful introductory material appropriately pitched for undergraduates. --Gina Brandolino, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor "One of the greatest strengths of the volume is the introduction by Christine Chism. Its language is both accessible and eloquent; the concepts she explains are sophisticated. In it, she contextualizes the poem in terms of both its literary and critical reception and introduces readers to the cultural and political climate of fourteenth-century England. Further sections suggest possible directions for undergraduate research and gesture toward contemporary scholarship on the poem.     "Also to be lauded are the translator's preface (in which Glaser reflects candidly about the challenges of translation and the difficult choices such a task requires) and, wonderfully, the translation itself. It is both accurate and evocative. . . . Glaser's translation succeeds in rendering both formal elements of the poem in modern English, while faithfully conveying the sense of the original lines.     "The most innovative element of Glaser's approach to his translation is his emphasis on the poem's east Cheshire dialect, arguing that its translation "must contain a relatively high portion of chewy Old English or Norse terms" (xliv).    "Glaser's audience is not the popular one dazzled by Heaney or by Simon Armitage's recent translation of the same poem. The language of his Preface, as well as of the notes that accompany the text, is arrestingly colloquial and unapologetically didactic. Glaser's audience is one who lacks familiarity with Arthurian legend and the tropes of medieval romance."     —Megan Stein, Department of English, University of California, Riverside, in Comitatus