Sir Gatoain and the Green Knight : a Middle English
Arthurian Romance retold in Modern Prose. By Jessie L. Weston. With Designs by M. M. Crawford. (David Nutt.)—The original Sir Gawain was a very different person from the one invented by " the monkish lovers of edification," who " turned the model of knightly virtues and courtesy into a mere vulgar libertine," to quote Miss Weston's preface to the first volume of " Arthurian Romances unrepresented in Malory's Morte d'Arthur." Certainly no other knight could have come more honourably from the trying situa- tions into which he was thrust by the Green Knight and his too fascinating lady. The difficulties of translation from fourteenth- century West Midland dialect have been skilfully met, and this quaint little book takes us at once into that country which is "apart from place withholding time." The designs, particularly that on the cover, are attractive and appropriate.
Previous page
