1969sl 's review for:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight by Gawain Poet

5.0

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This amazing piece of art - probably forced at throats of school kids in UK - was forgotten for centuries until unearthed again in 1839 and has been published in various translations ever since. As translator Brian Stone notes it is a language which is remote from Chaucer as Chaucer is from ours - so we are basically talking about dead language. Contrary to zillions of interpretations that dwell on possible symbolical meanings, religion, magic and even erotic angles, I approached it as medieval adventure romance, which works just fine by me. It turned out amazingly easy, absorbing read and best of all is the sense of listening an ancient voice telling a story so removed from our times and perspective - where today we have books and movies packed with non-stop action and cliffhangers, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" has very little of action and a tons of wonderful, flowery, poetic descriptions that create pure magic if reader is in the right frame of mind - it probably works very well as reading out loud in the winter's night around Christmas I would guess. It is a slim volume of a great beauty and worth re-visiting. The more I think about it, the more I like it.