John Ridland, PhD, taught English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for forty-three years. His recent book of translation is the Middle English anonymous poet's masterpiece, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Able Muse Press, 2016). His other publications include A Brahms Card Ballad, first published in Hungarian translation, Happy in an Ordinary Thing, and a book-length translation of Pet�fi's John the Valiant. With Dr. Peter Czipott, Dr. Ridland has translated several other Hungarian poets, including S�ndor M�rai's The Withering World (Alma Classics, 2013) and Miklos R�dnoti's All That Still Matters at All (New American Press, 2014). In 2014 Askew Publications issued his epic poem, A. Lincolniad. John Ridland, PhD, taught English at the University of California, Santa Barbara, for forty-three years. His recent book of translation is the Middle English anonymous poet's masterpiece, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Able Muse Press, 2016). His other publications include A Brahms Card Ballad, first published in Hungarian translation, Happy in an Ordinary Thing, and a book-length translation of Pet�fi's John the Valiant. With Dr. Peter Czipott, Dr. Ridland has translated several other Hungarian poets, including S�ndor M�rai's The Withering World (Alma Classics, 2013) and Miklos R�dnoti's All That Still Matters at All (New American Press, 2014). In 2014 Askew Publications issued his epic poem, A. Lincolniad.
With his loving rendition of a great classic into vigorous metrical
lines, John Ridland has given Sir Gawain and the Green Knight a
fresh lease on life. I've seen several other versions of this
masterpiece, but none so engagingly readable as Ridland's. His
preface, too, is useful and illuminating. Here is a book to enjoy
right now and to cherish forever.-X.J. Kennedy
John Ridland gives us a recognizably English Gawain, and a very
pleasurable one at that. The language is ours. It is slightly
elevated, as befits a work so finely crafted, but only enough to
demand our attention. Originally written in the same alliterative
verse as Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was archaic in
its own day; now, over six-hundred years later, alliterative verse
can be as inaccessible as the pentatonic harp tunes that apparently
accompanied it. Ridland gives the poem a long, loose line that
sings in the lyrical passages, creeps in the spooky ones, and
cavorts in the comic ones. Just as important, the densely mythic
ethos, fully intact, enriches every word.-Richard Wakefield
Panoramas of banqueting and hunting, closely observed rituals of
dressing, arming, and game preparation, and rich descriptions of
landscape and weather-Ridland's translation presents these in all
their delightful, over-the-top particularity.-Maryann Corbett (from
the foreword)
The language in which the consummate poet and translator John
Ridland serves up this delicious story in verse is exactly what it
deserves. The descriptions are exuberant, the narrative flows and
exhilarates like the wine at the courts we're asked to imagine, and
the exchanges between complex characters so subtly flavored by
intelligent diplomacy that it makes the dialogue of much current
fiction seem, by contrast, like a six-pack on the front stoop. Read
this book. I suspect that, like all enchantments, it shifts and
assumes different forms to different eyes. But I do guarantee
surprises, and inexhaustible delight.-Rhina P. Espaillat
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