The Green Knight

As O'Donoghue (The Seasons of Cullen Church) explains in the illuminating introduction to his verse translation of the 14th-century epic: "Gawain survived by chance, when many anonymous poems of the same kind did not, and was hardly mentioned—or read—until the nineteenth century when it was first printed." He later notes "The poem's modernity has been repeatedly acknowledged and reproduced," which explains its lasting impact as one of the two great Middle English long poems alongside Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. Despite the difficulties of translating the verse, which is impossibly alliterative in the Middle English original, O'Donoghue brings striking scenes to life, as when Gawain decapitates the Green Knight only to watch the head roll on the floor, and his enemy take "hold of his beautiful head and [lift] it up... holding his head by the hair with his hand." The knights stare on, stunned, as the Green Knight mounts his horse: "The king and Gawain then/ laughed at this green man./ But they had to face the truth/ that it was unnatural." This translation brings to life a classic that readers will want to revisit. (July)