We have a long way to go, and there is time ahead for thought.
| Poems by J.R.R. Tolkien | |
| Sir Gawain and the Green Knight | |
|---|---|
| Poem Information | |
| Written | Fourteenth-century |
| Revised | Around 1923; between 1947 and 1953 |
| Published | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl and Sir Orfeo |
| Subject(s) | Sir Gawain and the Green Knight at Wikipedia |
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a fourteenth-century English poem translated, amongst others, by J.R.R. Tolkien. It is a chivalric romance written in Middle English alliterative verse that follows Sir Gawain, King Arthur's nephew, after he accepts a challenge from the Green Knight, a Celtic figure, to a beheading game. The beheading game is a common trope in Celtic Myths, in which a stranger arrives at the court of a noble or king and challenges a hero to an exchange of blows in which the hero may, if they choose to accept the challenge, cut off the stranger's head, though the price for that is that the stranger may then cut of the hero's head.
The Sir Gawain and the Green Knight manuscript additionally includes three religious texts called Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience.