Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is one of the most famous knightly works of medieval English literature, written in the late 14th century by an anonymous author.
The poem stands out for its unusual form – alliterative verse with elements of rhyming iambic, as well as linguistic authenticity, which is carefully conveyed by the Belarusian translation, executed directly from Middle English.
The edition includes four explanatory articles: on Arthurian legends, the peculiarities of Middle English, the structure of alliterative verse, and the translation method.
This book is a unique opportunity to touch true classics and feel the knightly spirit of the Arthurian era.

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The anonymous late 14th-century poem "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is rightly considered one of the gems of medieval English literature. It has been translated many times not only into modern English but also into other European languages. J.R.R. Tolkien, the most famous translator of the poem, placed it on par with the best works of the "father of English poetry" Geoffrey Chaucer.

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" is interesting not only for its content as an excellent chivalric romance but also for its form, as it is written in ancient alliterative verse with elements of rhyming iambic, and its language contains many dialectisms and archaisms. All these features of the work are preserved as much as possible in the Belarusian translation, which also stands out because it was done directly from Middle English. The fact is that due to the popularity of J.R.R. Tolkien's work, many translations of this poem are made not from the original, but from Tolkien's translation into modern English. Examples of this include the Polish and Ukrainian translations.

In addition to the poem itself, the book contains a whole series of articles that will help you better understand and appreciate this work. If you know nothing about Arthuriana, don't worry: the first article in the book is dedicated precisely to it, and from it, you will learn about the history of the emergence of legends about Arthur and his knights, the main works of the cycle, and a brief summary of the most important of them. If you have never heard anything about Middle English before, the second article will give you some idea about it and how it differs from modern English. If you are intrigued by what "alliterative verse" is, in which the poem is written, you will also learn about it from the Belarusian edition of the poem: the third article of the book is an exhaustive digest of key modern monographs and dissertations dedicated to alliterative verse. You will find nothing similar, except in English. Finally, the last, fourth, article explains the rules by which the translation was made and why it turned out to be so unusual (but no more unusual than the original!).