Page:Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - Tolkien and Gordon - 1925.djvu/11



first endeavour of this edition has been to provide the student with a text which, treating the unique manuscript with all due respect, is yet pleasant for the modern reader to look at, and is free (as are few Middle English texts) from a litter of italics, asterisks, and brackets, the trail of the passing editor. The second has been to provide a sufficient apparatus for reading this remarkable poem with an appreciation as far as possible of the sort which its author may be supposed to have desired. Much of the literature that begins to gather about Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, though not without interest, has little bearing on this object, and many of the theories held, or questions asked, about the poem have here been passed over or lightly handled—the nature and significance of the ‘test’; the sources, near and remote, of the story’s elements and details; the identity, character, life, and other writings of the author (who remains unknown); his immediate motive in writing this romance; and so on.

On the other hand, the more linguistic part of the apparatus, which is principally directed towards determining, as precisely as possible, the meaning of the author’s actual words (in so far as the manuscript