‘With Lel Letteres Loken’: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Line 35

Herman examines the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the nineteenth century, Frederic Madden, the poem's first modern editor, glossed loken as 'secured, inclosed, fastened'. Both Richard Morris and Israel Gollanez accepted this interpretation. In the twentieth century, J. R. R...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Notes and queries 2010-09, Vol.57 (3), p.311-313
Main Author:	Herman, Jason M
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	1100-1499 Middle English period alliteration Bibliography Crux English Literature Epic literature Gawain-Poet Literary criticism Middle English and Fifteenth Century orality Poets Separate Works Sir Gawain and the Green Knight storyteller Textual Studies vocabulary
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Herman examines the poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In the nineteenth century, Frederic Madden, the poem's first modern editor, glossed loken as 'secured, inclosed, fastened'. Both Richard Morris and Israel Gollanez accepted this interpretation. In the twentieth century, J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon suggested the meaning 'linked' for loken and took the phrase as a reference to the alliterative verse technique. This interpretation has come to predominate, and in her widely read translation Marie Borroff enshrined it as 'linked in measures meetly / By letters tried and true'.
ISSN:	0029-3970 1471-6941 1471-6941