Simon Armitage's new version is meticulously responsive and responsible to the tact and sophistication of the original - but responds equally to its own 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.

A new verse translation by Brian O'Donoghue

A splendid new translation of the classic Arthurian tale of enchantment, adventure, and romance, presented alongside the original Middle English text.


Capturing the pace, impact, and richly alliterative language of the original text, W. S. Merwin has imparted a new immediacy to a spellbinding narrative, written centuries ago by a poet whose name is now unknown, lost to time.

J.R.R. Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, unpublished at the time of his death, was prepared for publication by his son Christopher Tolkien. The translation recreates the archaic language and alliterative meter of the original.

Completely revised from Stone's 1959 translation. Also includes two essays on the poem, "The Common Enemy of Man" and "Gawain's 'Eternal Jewel'", notes on a production of the poem as a play in 1971 and background information on the manuscript, the poet, and the symbolism of the pentacle in the poem.

Borroff's translation preserves the formulaic character of the language, reflects the diction of the original poem, and reproduces the metrical variety of the original and its cumulative momentum or "swing".

Retold in modern prose by Jessie L. Weston