The Gawain Project

[pallas_athena]

I've decided to carry on translating Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and have started a new journal to do so: gawain_project.

I have to admit I never much saw the point of translating Middle English, since I think people should just read it, but it's true that the Northern dialect of Gawain isn't really comprehensible to an everyday reader. And besides, I wanted to tell you guys a good story.

It's winter, after all, and winter is the time for storytelling-- especially Arthurian tales. If you want to read Malory, winter nights are the best time. But although Malory clearly likes Gawain and gives him a lot of adventures, the Green Knight tale isn't in Malory. It isn't anywhere else but in this one manuscript, miraculous survivor of a library fire in 1731.

So if you'd like a good story to get us through the winter, then do add gawain_project to your Friends list. I can promise knightly quests, exciting travels, a beheading game gone horribly wrong, feasting, drinking, kissing, hunting and sexual harassment (of Gawain, by a lady.) See you there!

Comments

[larissa-00.livejournal.com]

Oh wow, someone else who thinks the Pearl/Gawain poet deserves some more airtime! :-)) I've always preferred that writer to Chaucer's 'Carry on . .' film humour, and don't get me started on how much I _detest_ patient Griselda.

The boys might wake up when you get to the lady's gown, 'her breast bare before and her back also' ;->
It might be fun to do Patience (and a lot quicker!) but the LOLCAT Bible has already done such a superb job of telling Jonah's story, that there's no place for competition.

[artnouveauho.livejournal.com]

Poor old Griselda! Boccaccio's creation, I think, right? And he and Chaucer both have enough merry, resourceful women in their canon to make up for her. I mean, put Griselda in one side of the scales and the Wife of Bath in the other... and add in how unhappy Chaucer's own marriage was, and you get a sort of uneasy balance, I think.

I'm glad to find another friend of that amazing anonymous poet! I'd welcome questions and/or criticism in the comments, whenever you feel inclined.

[larissa-00.livejournal.com]

Well, methinks Chrétien de Troyes probably has the best heroines: read Yonec, if you haven't [0]. I really like Marie de France's writings but most of her heroines are quite drippy.

[0] Whether I could still remember _any_ Old French to translate that . . . . . college was a _long_ time ago :-o

correction

[larissa-00.livejournal.com]

I meant Yvain, Yonec is Marie de France.
My excuse is that my brain is reeling from having a bank clerk tell me that £1000 was going to give me $665, and, when I queried this, telling me that 'she could never remember whether to divide or multiply by the exchange rate' *runs away, gibbering*

[veridianeyes.livejournal.com]

Hurrah!