Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Derek Pearsall Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, translated, with notes, by Joseph Glaser, and an Introduction by Christine Chism. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2011. Pp. liii, 83. ISBN-13: 978–1–60384–618–9. $10.95. Since Sir Gawain and the Green Knight first became an object of attention to scholars and students following the first publication of the poem by Frederic Madden in 1839, it has been widely admired. It is, or was until recently, the most frequently read Middle English text among undergraduates after Chaucer, unless Langland crept in between them. But the language is difficult: the author writes in a north-west midland dialect remote from the London English that was becoming standard, employs rare dialectal words and many loan-words from Old Norse and Old French, and himself enjoys extreme lexical innovation and experimentation. Though one would normally deplore the resort to translation, or more properly modernization, with such comparatively transparent Middle English as that of Chaucer or Langland, Gawain is different. The assumption must be that the poem’s story is strong and imaginatively compelling enough in itself to make translation worthwhile, despite the inevitable dilution and degradation. Translators can use prose and try to keep close to the literal meaning of the original, sometimes providing a parallel-text of the original; or they can use an unrhymed long line and try to preserve the word-order and alliterative patterns of the original, with lexical substitution when necessary; or they can use a different verse-form and treat the original freely in order to create a poem that will be aesthetically pleasing in its own right. Of the three forms of modernization-translation, Joseph Glaser chooses the second, which is perhaps the most challenging of the three, given that it demands not only a high level of technical skill but also a struggle and final decision with every impossible-to-decide-on connotative richness. He generally follows the alliterative pattern of the original, that is, with alliteration on the first three staves (stresses) of a regular four-stress line (aa/ax, where the slash marks the caesura between two well-marked half-lines), though he allows himself more freedom than the original in the use of variant forms such as aa/xa and xa/aa. As for meter, instead of the variable syntactic-metrical patterns of the original, Glaser tends towards a steady four-beat quasi-anapaestic line, regular but not thumpingly insistent. As a specimen of his method, I use the opening lines (following the text of the original as given in the specimen on p. lii) so as to ensure a choice of example that it not subjectively determined. [End Page 104] Siþen þe sege and þe assaut watz sesed at Troye, Þe borʒ brittened and brent to brondez and askez, Þe tulk þat þe trammes of tresoun þer wroʒt Watz tried for his tricherie, þe trewest on erthe: Hit watz Ennias þe athel, and his highe kynde, Þat siþen depreced prouinces, and patrounes bicome Welneʒe of al þe wele in þe west iles. Once the siege and the assault was ceased at Troy, The city battered and burnt down to brands and ashes, The man who entangled that town in his treason Was impeached for his perfidy, the purest on earth. It was Aeneas the noble and his renowned kin, Who put down whole provinces to make themselves princes Of well nigh all wealth in the isles of the West. The first two lines run smooth and close to the original, though ‘city’ replaces borʒ so as to avoid the third alliteration in the first half-line and the suggestion of a third (hypermetric) stress (a frequently employed variant in the original, though in reality the apparent third stave is usually absorbed into the meter of a two-stress a-line). In the third line, the translator faces tulk, one of the many synonyms for ‘man’ that make alliteration easier for the fourteenth-century poet. He abandons any search for an alliterating substitute and simply shifts the alliteration to the last three staves (xa/ aa, a rare and irregular...