Aubrey's Reviews > Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation

I gave this three stars because it whetted my bisexuality for (view spoiler)[Morgan la Fay (hide spoiler)], because seriously, if you hate women, there's only three things you can do to tide me over with your writing: not write about them, be glorious at everything else, or include a female character who for all your fancy rhythms obviously scares the living shit out of you. In the words of the immortal Shelley, if I cannot satisfy the one, I will indulge the other, and with twenty lines out of 2530 in this Arthurian tale, a little goes a long way.

Moving beyond the author's obvious issues and more towards the stuffs of academia, it's hard to be impressed by this if one encounters Beowulf and The Heptameron first. The former has it beat in terms of pure strength of utterance, while the latter has it beat in, well, everything else. It's the curse of encountering the critique before the critiqued, and while SGatGK has got a lovely sense of nature and hunting and male fashion, it doesn't make up for the utter flatline of the themes. Yes, lack of honor is the worst, yes, all women are lying whores, yes, it sucks that you can't get rid of sin no matter how many people are forgiven by, but guess what? Least you don't have to deal with Eve and all that biblical jazz. Gawain's mark of shame even turns into a fashion accessory of significant social status at the end which, as far as thematic meaning goes, I'm not even going to attempt to contextualize but will tell you for a fact that it must be amazing.

What else. If I had to write an essay about this I'd explore the relation of Nature to Humanity and all such Wicker Man themes, but it's not something I'll go after unless I have to. There was rhyme and meter and some interesting stuff about fundamental differences between Germanic and Latin senses of poetry in the introduction, so that'll be useful in the future. Armitage even gives the benefit of the doubt to whether the unknown is indeed male in the ending appendage, but frankly, he can have it. I'll take what bits and pieces I can manage and leave the glory behind.

So summer comes in season with its subtle airs,
when the west wind sighs among shoots and seeds,
and those plants which flower and flourish are a pleasure
as their leaves let drip their drink of dew
and they sparkle and glitter when glanced by sunlight.
Then autumn arrives to harden the harvest
and with it comes a warning to ripen before winter.
The drying airs arrive, driving up dust
from the face of the earth to the heights of heaven,
and wild sky wrestles the sun with its winds,
and the leaves of the lime lay littered on the ground,
and grass that was green turns withered and gray.
Then all which had risen over-ripens and rots
and yesterday on yesterday the year dies away,
and winter returns as is the way of the world
through time.
At Michaelmas the moon
stands like that season's sign,
a warning to Gawain
to rouse himself and ride.

P.S. Who else cannot wait for that upcoming Dev Patel adaptation? Ouh là là is a massive understatement.