The Fall of Arthur
ISBN 978-0-544-11589-7 (hardback) | 978-0-007-48989-3 (deluxe edition) | |
Preceded by | The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún | |
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Followed by | Beowulf: A Translation and Commentary |
The Fall of Arthur is an unfinished poem by J. R. R. Tolkien that is concerned with the legend of King Arthur. A posthumous first edition of the poem was published by HarperCollins in May 2013.[1]
Poem
Composition history
Tolkien wrote the poem during the earlier part of the 1930s, when he was
The poem had been abandoned for nearly 20 years in 1955, and The Lord of the Rings had been published, when Tolkien expressed his wish to return to and complete his "long poem".[T 1] But it remained unfinished, nonetheless.[3]
Approach
The Fall of Arthur is written in
Plot
The existing fragment of the poem tells that
Publication history
The existence of the poem became known publicly with Humphrey Carpenter's 1977 biography of Tolkien.[5]
After Tolkien's death, his Arthurian poem came to be one of his longest-awaited unedited works. According to the Tolkien scholar John D. Rateliff, Rayner Unwin had announced plans to edit the poem as early as 1985, but the edition was postponed in favour of "more pressing projects" (including The History of Middle-earth, edited and brought to publication between 1983 and 1996), answering the demand for background on Tolkien's legendarium more than his literary production in other areas.[6]
The book The Fall of Arthur, containing the part of the poem completed by Tolkien, and essays on the poem by his son Christopher Tolkien, was published in the United Kingdom by HarperCollins, and in the United States by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.[7]
Reception
General
Carpenter noted that the poem "has alliteration but no rhyme. [...] In his own Arthurian poem [Tolkien] did not touch on the Grail but began an individual rendering of the
His bed was barren there black phantoms
of desire unsated and savage fury
in his brain had brooded till bleak morning
Hilary Dorsch Wong, reviewing the work for the Washington Independent Review of Books, describes the poem as "accessible, with a driving plot and engaging use of language."[8] She finds the principal characters "strongly fleshed-out"; in her view the poem's core consists of the interaction between the "lust-driven" Mordred and Guinever, along with the "backstory" of the deeply conflicted Lancelot's history with Guinever.[8] In her view, the poem offers "wonderful storytelling".[8]
On the other hand, Wong doubts whether Christopher Tolkien's detailed but dry chapters, which take up twice as much space as the poem itself, will appeal to many readers. She notes, for example, that while Christopher Tolkien's analyses which details his father took from each of the different medieval versions of the story, he "fails to draw conclusions from this information, or to make wider arguments about Tolkien’s poem from it."
Scholarly
Flieger, in Tolkien Studies, writes that Tolkien's Arthur differs markedly from Malory's, Tennyson's, or his contemporary T. H. White's; in her view, his Arthur is "at once older and sterner, less idealized, and decidedly less romantic", but true to Tolkien's own era.[3]
Chrétien de Troyes e.g. Lancelot, Perceval 12th century |
Malory Le Morte d'Arthur 15th century |
Tennyson Idylls of the King 19th century |
T. H. White The Once and Future King 20th century |
Tolkien The Fall of Arthur 20th century |
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"colorful world of chivalry and courtly love" | "fully fleshed-out story of human intentions gone disastrously wrong" | "sermon on 'sense at war with soul', a flawed Round Table and an ideal king" | "bittersweet riff on war and human nature" | "a somber story whose overriding image is the tide, embodying the ebb and flow of events" |
She comments that missing from the poem are all the bright images of
See also
References
Primary
- Houghton Mifflin, June 1955
Secondary
- ^ "The Fall of Arthur – J.R.R. Tolkien". HarperCollins. Archived from the original on 11 May 2013. Retrieved 23 May 2013.
- ^ HarperCollins Archived 11 May 2013 at the Wayback Machine cover text: "he evidently began it in the earlier nineteen-thirties, and it was sufficiently advanced for him to send it to a very perceptive friend who read it with great enthusiasm at the end of 1934 and urgently pressed him 'You simply must finish it!’ But in vain: he abandoned it, at some date unknown, though there is some evidence that it may have been in 1937".
- ^ .
- ^ Flood, Alison (9 October 2012). "'New' JRR Tolkien epic due out next year". The Guardian.
- ^ a b c Carpenter 1977, part 4, ch. 6.
- ^ Rateliff, John D. (12 July 2012). "The Rumor". Sacnoth's Scriptorium.
I remember Rayner Unwin, when I got to meet with him in 1985, telling me about this as one of the forthcoming projects already in the works, but which wdn't be coming out until some more pressing projects (like the HISTORY OF MIDDLE-EARTH series, whose third volume I'd just picked up that same day).
- ^ "The Fall of Arthur". WorldCat. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
- ^ a b c d e f g Wong, Hilary Dorsch (26 September 2013). "The Fall of Arthur". Washington Independent Review of Books. Retrieved 28 August 2023.
Sources
- ISBN 978-0-04-928037-3.
- ISBN 978-0-35-865298-4.
Further reading
- J.R.R. Tolkien Encyclopedia: Scholarship and Critical Assessment(2006).
External links
- Ruth Lacon, On The Fall of Arthur: Pre-Publication Speculation By a Longtime Student 20 March 2013 (tolkienlibrary.com)
- Tolkien's handwriting scans 20 December 2009 The Fountain Pen Network