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A review by caliesha
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo by J.R.R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien
Reading an anonymous author makes me uncomfortably aware of how I'll never truly understand the past. Without an author to call upon, a name to whisper, how do we approach these poems? As sentences that never existed and then suddenly did?
I'm writing a review on the Internet of a book I read on my laptop based on material from a single surviving manuscript by an unknown author who lived 700 years ago and would not even understand the language their work has been translated into, let alone the world it exists in.
And yet, not all hope is lost. We know incredibly little about the Gawain Poet's life, and they know absolutely nothing of ours - but somehow we can still share the poetry. Across time and space, we'll always have poetry.
So yes, reading an anonymous work makes me uncomfortable, as does rating 14th-century literature. But, alliterative revival makes me happy, as does Orpheus, so this was an enjoyable read.
I'm writing a review on the Internet of a book I read on my laptop based on material from a single surviving manuscript by an unknown author who lived 700 years ago and would not even understand the language their work has been translated into, let alone the world it exists in.
And yet, not all hope is lost. We know incredibly little about the Gawain Poet's life, and they know absolutely nothing of ours - but somehow we can still share the poetry. Across time and space, we'll always have poetry.
So yes, reading an anonymous work makes me uncomfortable, as does rating 14th-century literature. But, alliterative revival makes me happy, as does Orpheus, so this was an enjoyable read.