Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Narrates the strange tale of a green knight who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts, and decapitates the intruder. The knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. Next Yuletide, Gawain dutifully sets forth.

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"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts, and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. Next Yuletide Gawain dutifully sets forth. His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dream-like castle, a dire challenge answered, and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing. Simon Armitage's new version is meticulously responsible to the tact and sophistication of the original - but responsible equally to its own persuasive claims to be read as an original new poem. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two northern poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscapes - acoustic, physical and metaphorical - in the course of which the Gawain poet has finally found his true and long-awaited translator.