Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl are two poems by an unknown author written in about 1400. Sir Gawain is a romance, a fairy-tale for adults, full of life and color; but it is also much more than this, being at the same time a powerful moral tale that examines religious and social values.
Pearl is an elegy on the death of a child, a poem pervaded with a sense of great personal loss: but, like Gawain, it is also a sophisticated and moving debate on much less tangible matters.
Sir Orfeo is a slighter romance, belonging to an earlier and different tradition. It was a special favorite of Tolkien’s.
The three translations represent the complete rhyme and alliterative schemes of the originals and are uniquely accompanied with the complete text of Tolkien’s acclaimed 1953 W.P. Ker Memorial Lecture that he delivered on Sir Gawain.