The Death of King Arthur: A New Verse Translation

by Simon Armitage (Translator)

Overview

“A new standard in the enterprise of bringing the past back into poetry.”—Tom Shippey, Wall Street Journal

First appearing around 1400, The Death of King Arthur is one of the most widely beloved and spectacularly alliterative poems penned in Middle English. While it is more than six centuries old, this magisterial new translation has finally given American readers the ability to experience the splendor and poignancy of the original. Echoing the lyrical passion that so distinguished Seamus Heaney’s Beowulf, Simon Armitage has produced a virtuosic translation of a timeless masterpiece, one that follows Arthur’s bloody conquests across Europe, all the way to his spectacular and even bloodier downfall. This unparalleled presentation of the greatest Arthurian tale promises to become the definitive edition for generations to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393343533
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	12/03/2012
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Simon Armitage is Professor of Poetry at the University of Leeds and from 2015 to 2019 served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry. He has published ten collections of poetry and is the author of four stage plays, over a dozen television films, a libretto, two novels, and three memoirs. His poetry has won numerous awards, including a Gregory Award, a Forward Prize, a Lannan Literary Award, and the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry. In 2019 he was appointed Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

Introduction Simon Armitage 7

A Note on the Meter of the Alliterative Morte Arthure James Simpson 15

The Death of King Arthur 19

Characters and Names of the Alliterative Morte Arthure 297

About the Translator 301

Editorial Reviews

…Armitage's spectacular translation…renders this anonymous poem into modern English lines that command your full allegiance…forget Tennyson's Victorian niceties in Idylls of the King; Armitage's pages are splattered with gore, "gloupy with slime"…With captivating articulation, these lines growl and roar and hiss in a way that reminds us just how much our preference for rhyme over alliteration has cost us. And amid all the viscera and gore, we find such startling moments of intimacy and grief, expressed by soldiers wholly unconstrained by our narrow, modern-day expectations of manhood.

The Washington Post - Ron Charles

"Armitage, on top form, renders [Arthur] expertly."

Independent - Bill Greenwell

"Armitage has triumphed. . . . The verse requires attention; but, once you are attuned to the alliterative structure, it’s as swift as the swish of a sword."

Spectator - David Blackburn

"Invitingly ingenious and inventive."

Guardian - Jeremy Noel-Tod

Armitage has triumphed. . . . The verse requires attention; but, once you are attuned to the alliterative structure, it's as swift as the swish of a sword.--David Blackburn "Spectator"

Armitage, on top form, renders [Arthur] expertly.--Bill Greenwell "Independent"

Invitingly ingenious and inventive.--Jeremy Noel-Tod "Guardian"

From the Publisher

"[T]ake heart, brave literary warriors. Norton has...just published a paperback edition of Simon Armitage’s spectacular translation of The Death of King Arthur. The celebrated British writer renders this anonymous poem into modern English lines that command your full allegiance."

Washington Post - Ron Charles

Award-winning British poet Armitage follows his celebrated 2007 translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with this muscular, clanging rendering of the Middle English Alliterative Morte Arthure. The original poem appears on facing pages and presents readers with a miscellany of linguistic loose ends, some lines requiring very little translation and others remaining lost in the Middle English word horde. Armitage's translation preserves the robust alliteration of the original and utilizes the repeated blows of letter sounds to evoke the din of battle as well as to propel the poem to its ferocious and tragic end. Here, Arthur is an ambivalent figure, sure of God's grace yet troubled by dreams that bind the fate of all Britons to his conflict with Sir Lucius, the Roman emperor whose ambition and arrogance mirror Arthur's. VERDICT Armitage's version of the Alliterative Morte Arthure strengthens Norton's catalog of new translations of Anglo-Saxon and Middle English texts. It is also a remarkable instance of Armitage's own unique poetic strengths, especially his ear for lyrical economy and gift for sensual, tactile description.—J. Greg Matthews, Washington State Univ. Libs., Pullman

Library Journal

The cadences of medieval alliterative poetry are made surprisingly playful in Simon Armitage’s new modern English translation of the ALLITERATIVE MORTE ARTHURE. Narrator Bill Wallis engages the listener with his kindly, craggy voice, and one imagines the Dark Ages storyteller who might have first read this tale. This lesser-known Arthurian story focuses on King Arthur’s European campaign against the vestiges of the Roman Empire. It’s filled with vivid descriptions of battlefield gore, which Wallis thrillingly animates. The original Anglo-Saxon MORTE ARTHURE is included in this recording, and for this reading Wallis appropriately adopts a heavy brogue. Having just heard the modern translation, the listener is prepared for the archaic vocabulary and will ultimately be rewarded with access to the deeper music of the English language. F.T. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine

MARCH 2012 - AudioFile