MIDDLE-EARTH TIMELINE
This book gathers Tolkien's translations into modern English of three Middle English poems. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight tells of the Christmas challenge of a mysterious green knight at Camelot. Pearl is a dream vision in which a father mourns his lost daughter. Sir Orfeo retells the Greek myth of Orpheus as a Breton lay, with the King of Faery in place of the god of the dead.
Tolkien kept the verse forms of the originals, with their alliteration and rhymes. His Gawain translation had been broadcast by the BBC in 1953. Christopher Tolkien edited the volume after his father's death, and George Allen and Unwin published it in 1975.
Tolkien's verse translations of three Middle English poems: the Arthurian Sir Gawain, the dream vision Pearl and the fairy lay Sir Orfeo.