Piers
Plowman with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,
Pearl and
Sir Orfeo
A cura di
William Langland e Anon.
Traduzione
dei poemi di J.R.R. Tolkien e Terence
Tiller
1° edizione 2001
Everyman's Library, Londra, pp. 461
Rilegato
con sovraccoperta
Nota di copertina
William
Langland is the name generally attributed to the author of Piers Plowman, a
classic Middle English poem. Written in an unrhymed, alliterative style that
was traditional at the time, the poem is composed of a series of dream visions
in which the dreamer grapples with issues such as the nature of Christ's love
and the relationship between people and God. Piers Plowman is considered to be
one of the greatest religious poems in the English language, and Langland ranks
among the best of the Middle English authors, along with Geoffrey Chaucer and
the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Langland is believed
to have lived from about 1331 to 1400. Based on the poem, which is thought to
be partly autobiographical, Langland probably spent his early years in the
Malvern and later lived in London. Some scholars believe that Langland was a
poor cleric in one of the minor religious orders; others suggest that he was a
monk. Whichever is true, it is evident from his work that he was well-educated,
a gifted poet, and very knowledgeable about both the political and the
ecclesiastical controversies of his time. It is not certain whether any more of
Langland's work has survived. Piers the Plowman's Creed and Richard Redeless,
two shorter poems that were previously attributed to Langland, are now believed
to have been written by others.
A writer of
fantasies, Tolkien, a professor of language and literature at Oxford
University, was always intrigued by early English and the imaginative use of
language. In his greatest story, the trilogy The Lord of the Rings (1954--56),
Tolkien invented a language with vocabulary, grammar, syntax, even poetry of
its own. Though readers have created various possible allegorical
interpretations, Tolkien has said: "It is not about anything but itself.
(Certainly it has no allegorical intentions, general, particular or topical,
moral, religious or political.)" In The Adventures of Tom Bombadil (1962),
Tolkien tells the story of the "master of wood, water, and hill," a
jolly teller of tales and singer of songs, one of the multitude of characters
in his romance, saga, epic, or fairy tales about his country of the Hobbits.
Tolkien was also a formidable medieval scholar, as evidenced by his work,
Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics (1936) and his edition of Anciene Wisse:
English Text of the Anciene Riwle. Among his works published posthumously, are
The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún and The Fall of Arthur, which was edited by his
son, Christopher.
Note
Una edizione del 2001, è stata stampata in 4.500 cope e distribuita nelle scuole statali UK nell’ambito del Millenium Project sostenuto dalla National Lottery.
Una edizione del 2001, è stata stampata in 4.500 cope e distribuita nelle scuole statali UK nell’ambito del Millenium Project sostenuto dalla National Lottery.
