Tag: Simon Armitage

Review – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Posted June 7, 2025 by Nicky in Reviews / 0 Comments

Review – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

by Simon Armitage

Genres: Arthuriana, Classics, Poetry
Pages: 114
Rating: five-stars
Synopsis:

Preserved on a single surviving manuscript dating from around 1400, composed by an anonymous master, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was rediscovered only two hundred years ago, and published for the first time in 1839. One of the earliest great stories of English literature after Beowulf, the poem narrates in crystalline verse the strange tale of a green knight on a green horse, who rudely interrupts the Round Table festivities one Yuletide, casting a pall of unease over the company and challenging one of their number to a wager. The virtuous Gawain accepts and decapitates the intruder with his own axe. Gushing blood, the knight reclaims his head, orders Gawain to seek him out a year hence, and departs. Next Yuletide Gawain dutifully sets forth… His quest for the Green Knight involves a winter journey, a seduction scene in a dream-like castle, a dire challenge answered — and a drama of enigmatic reward disguised as psychic undoing.

Simon Armitage’s new version is meticulously responsive to the tact and sophistication of the original — but equally succeeds in its powerfully persuasive ambition to be read as an original new poem. It is as if, six hundred years apart, two northern poets set out on a journey through the same mesmeric landscapes — acoustic, physical and metaphorical — in the course of which the Gawain poet has finally found his true and long-awaited translator.

Simon Armitage’s translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is not a straightforwardly scholarly one (though if you read his introduction, it’s clear that he’s critically engaged with the poem, its language, and the process of translation). It’s a bit like Seamus Heaney’s take on Beowulf: it’s a translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and it’s also something of its own.

It’s definitely not the version I used when studying the poem, though it is my favourite, and it’s long been the translation I would recommend for pure fun. If you want a version of Sir Gawain that doesn’t have any spin put on it, you’ll be best off leaving this aside and going to find a copy of the Middle English version with glosses, or if you can’t read Middle English, a reasonable scholarly facing-translation.

But this version is an excellent one as far as experiencing the poem goes, playing with the language, genuinely attempting the alliterative form (sometimes to mixed success, in my opinion), and making the poem feel pretty alive. Read it aloud to yourself if you can!

I love it dearly, and I’ve just snagged a copy of the audiobook read by Armitage on Libro.fm, which should also be great. This was a very good reread choice on my part.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: , , , , ,

Divider

Review – Homer's Odyssey

Posted August 24, 2014 by in Reviews / 2 Comments

Cover of Homer's Odyssey by Simon ArmitageHomer’s Odyssey, Simon Armitage

It’s funny to think I didn’t enjoy Armitage’s work the first time I came across it. I think it was his translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that changed that. He brought something fresh and dynamic to the poem, which made it a very different reading experience to other translations and adaptations. He’s done the same here with The Odyssey. This is not a translation, or even a completely faithful adaptation: I can think of several places where it departs from the original poem.

However, he brings that same dynamism to Homer’s voice as he did to the Gawain-poet’s. Some of the turns of phrase still ring perfectly true, mixed in with the modern vernacular he uses as well. I’m sure it drives purists crazy, but I set aside any professional qualms and just read it for enjoyment, and thought that he rendered some scenes beautifully — more true to the spirit of the original than any stuffy translation, too, I think.

If you want to read The Odyssey without reading the phrase ‘rosy-fingered dawn’, and you don’t want to worry about Greek customs (xenia, for example), this makes it very easy to follow the story and understand the basic motivations of all the characters. It has a robust beauty to it that wouldn’t work in translating, say, Vergil, but I think in translating Homer it works very well.

Rating: 5/5

Tags: , , ,

Divider