From Contemporary Poetry Review's Best Books of 2007

 

Best Translation:

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A New Verse Translation by Simon Armitage. W.W. Norton. An old standby, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has seen many translations. W.S. Merwin published his translation of the Middle English chivalric romance in 2004. J.R.R. Tolkien (with E.V. Gordon) offered a scholarly edition of the Middle English text in 1925 and later his own translation into modern English (alongside Pearl and Sir Orfeo, which may have issued from the pen of the same original author; some misguided fans of Tolkien later believed that he was the author, rather than merely translator, of the poem). The highly symbolic alliterative poem can be traced back to a single manuscript, recorded as "Cotton Nero A.x." As a hero, Gawain merits mention as early as the twelfth century in William of Malmesbury's Gesta Regum Anglorum and Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regun Britanniae. While the French preferred to depict the English night as a villain, Sir Gawain remains one of the great heroes of British myth and literature. Simon Armitage's translation has excited readers on both sides of the Atlantic this past year, and it may come to be our standard modern translation. His muscular deployment of alliterative rhythms and appealing contemporary language (including much British slang) breathe fresh life into a classic.