Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo

SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, PEARL, and SIR ORFEO are masterpieces of a remote and exotic age--the age of chivalry and wizards, knights and holy quests. Yet it is only in the unique artistry and imagination of J.R.R. Tolken that the language, romance, and power of these great stories comes to life for modern readers, in this masterful and compelling new translation.

J. R. R. Tolkien, beloved author of The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion, was Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford University from 1925 to 1945 and Professor of English Language and Literature and a Fellow of Merton College from 1945 to his retirement in 1959. As a scholar, his principal interest was in the literary and linguistic tradition of the English West Midlands, a section of England about 150 miles northwest of London. It was in the West Midlands of the late fourteenth century that the unidentified poet who is believed to have written Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is thought to have lived. Though remote from the dominant cultural center of London, the site of the royal court, the West Midlands is believed to have been a provincial yet highly sophisticated cultural center in its own right, with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight being its crowning, and lasting, literary achievement. Professor Tolkien died in 1973.