Anonymous

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Signet Classics)

This played with my mind (fr considering watching the movie cause of Dev Patel)

sophie <3

mirza

Super good but definitely made me appreciate the movie a lot more

Briar's Reviews

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is another great read for one of my English classes. I honestly love being able to read classic literature and hearing someone else's thoughts on it. I like seeing if I had the same understanding or if I was "way off" (per say, literature can be subjective).

This one was not my favourite but it was pretty cool. I always wanted to venture into some King Arthur and Camelot stories, so this one fit the bill. While it's not my favourite, it was very interesting to read it! 

There's a lot going on in this book depending on how you read it. Sir Gawain maybe being a coward or following the time's ideal hero trope. The sexual aspect of it. The ties of animals and how the heroes and villains act. Throw in the cool alliteration (depending on the translation you get), and it makes for one epic tale. It's all so interesting. And then, you know, maybe it was just meant to be a story and all of the themes weren't intended to be there?

Either way, I found Sir Gawain to be a more humanistic character than in other classic hero fiction. Sir Gawain seems like he fought for Arthur because he was the only one who had the guts to do it - not because he wanted too. He almost chickens out, avoids his problems for a bit and is actually scared. This romance doesn't feel as epic because he isn't the warrior prince we are all expecting, but instead he's a scared knight just doing his best. That's what I find super interesting about it. I didn't enjoy it as much, and maybe that's because he was... human? He acted reasonably and how we expect people to act? It's so strange.

If you get the chance, I recommend reading this and then finding some translations or explanation videos. Seeing all the different ideas about this work really made it stand out for me and make me enjoy it more!

Four out of five stars.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Penguin Classics)

Emmett

A short read to last one sitting, and which reads like a children's story for adults even though I don't doubt this was any part of the author's intention, i.e. this was pretty easy to wolf down. It may be a poem but it reads like a novella, courtesy to the translator, for better or for worse. Despite being a medieval text, it has all the power of a modern mystery and no prospective reader should have the ending spoiled for them. Or anything in the middle. If you just sit down and read, with no expectations or knowledge except the thrill offered by the description at the back of the book, you will, I think, experience for yourself the best of its plot twists.

Bryanna M

Kerry Gibbons

Short and sweet with a confusing moral. Language pretty clear and plot is easy enough to follow.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a masterpiece of medieval English literature and one of the finest Arthurian tales in any language. Though its ingenious plotting and verbal artistry continue to dazzle readers, it is written in a challenging regional dialect and uses many words that were already archaic when the poem was written in the late fourteenth century. This edition is designed to make the poem, in its original Middle English, accessible to students and general readers. Following standards adopted for editing other Middle English poets, the edition lightly normalizes spellings to make words more recognizable for a modern audience. Extensive marginal glossing of difficult words, thorough on-page explanatory notes, and a comprehensive glossary offer further support for readers. The historical appendices include other examples of medieval romance from France and Britain.