Which medieval poem did J.R.R. Tolkien translate into modern English with E.V. Gordon?

J.R.R. Tolkien translated Sir Gawain and the Green Knight into modern English with E.V. Gordon.

Their edition was published in 1925, while Tolkien was a professor at the University of Leeds. It presented the Middle English poem alongside the original text and became an important scholarly edition of the work.

The poem tells of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur’s court, who accepts a supernatural challenge from the Green Knight. Its themes include courage, courtesy, temptation, and the limits of human perfection.

Tolkien was also a major scholar of Beowulf and later delivered the influential lecture “Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics.” That connection can cause confusion, but his 1925 collaborative translation was of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Tolkien later produced his own prose translation of the poem, published posthumously.