num_pages: 158
description: 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 colour; but it is also much more than this, being at the same time a powerful moral tale which examines religious and social values.Pearl is apparently 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 favourite of Tolkien's. The three translations represent the complete rhyme and alliterative schemes of the originals.
language: English
title: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo
titlecomplete: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo
characters: The Green Knight, The Pearl-Maiden, Steward, Heurodis, Sir Orfeo, Morgan le Fay, The Dreamer, Sir Bertilak de Haute Desert, King Arthur, Fairy King, Sir Gawain
genres: Mythology, School, Medieval, Poetry, Literature, Fantasy, Classics, Adventure, Fiction, Arthurian
ratings_count: 12549
places: Camelot
publisher: HarperCollins Publishers