#the fall of arthur

We interrupt your regularly scheduled book blogging to bring you this important message.  My bestie bestest most best fabulous wonderful amazing friend Morgan lent me her copy of The Fall of Arthur.  It is beautiful and I was in love before I even opened it.  Tolkien writes in Modern English but in Middle English style, preserving the alliterative verse form and utilizing the standard rhythm, INCLUDING THE CAESURA.  YO.  

So in a lot of Middle English alliterative verse there’s this nifty little thing called the caesura.  In poems like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight the caesura splits each line into two distinct sections.  It’s basically invisible unless you read the poem out loud with correct pronunciation, at which point it becomes an integral part of the recitation.  Most translators are forced to abandon the caesura when turning Middle English into Modern English, so most students never encounter it except as a dead device.  This is a shame.  I have a lot of love for the caesura because a) it’s a fabulous word, b) I can read Middle English and when reading poems out loud it sounds so sexy, and c) the skill required to write a poem in alliterative verse with a perfect meter is astronomical, and dropping the caesura in translation, unavoidable as it may be, diminishes the apparent skill of Middle English poets.

In short, Tolkien was very smart, and when writing his poem about King Arthur he elected to follow in the footsteps of the greats and write an alliterative poem in Modern English that preserved the Medieval meter.  That’s badass.