- Published: 26 June 2014
- ISBN: 9780140424140
- Imprint: Penguin Classics
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 1040
- RRP: $45.00
The Works of the Gawain Poet
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience

















A new volume of the works of the Gawain poet, destined to become the definitive edition for students and scholars
This volume brings together four works of the unknown fourteenth-century poet famous for the Arthurian romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in their original Middle English. In one of the great tales of medieval literature, Gawain, the noblest knight of King Arthur's court, must keep a deadly bargain with a monstrous knight and resist the advances of his host's beautiful wife. The dream vision of Pearl depicts a bereaved father whose lost child leads him to glimpse heaven. And in moral poems based on stories from the Bible, Cleanness warns against sins of the flesh and of desecration, whilePatience encourages readers to endure suffering as God's will.
- Published: 26 June 2014
- ISBN: 9780140424140
- Imprint: Penguin Classics
- Format: Paperback
- Pages: 1040
- RRP: $45.00
Other books in the series
Praise for The Works of the Gawain Poet
The Works of the Gawain Poet is a model of popular scholarship, one that harkens back to the glories of the old historical criticism of Tolkien and Henry Sweet. That it has appeared not under the imprimatur of a university press but as a reasonably priced paperback from Penguin Classics is a pleasant surprise. It belongs on the shelves of every library in the English-speaking world
Washington Free Beacon
All of the poems are presented, rather daringly, in their original Middle English (very slightly cleaned up), and the array of critical materials dart very nimbly around the Gawain poet's wide reading - though anonymous, this poet was surely one of the best-read writers of his age - and the end-product effect is to provide readers with something very close to a fourteenth century First Folio. It's a marvelous performance all around
Open Letters Monthly
This is an authoritative and accessible edition, that is likely to become the standard text on undergraduate reading lists, as well as helping to bring the poems to a much wider non-specialist readership
Professor Simon Horobin, Oxford