Nor Never Spell Their 'Taters with a P

 Sonnet Wrote on the Fly-Leaf of My Grammar Durin' School Hours
by Nixon Waterman

O Education! Maybe thou art all
 Our teachers tell us, but just let me say
 That if my folks wouldst let me have my way,
 From early Spring till frost comes in the Fall
 I 'dst be outdoors, you bet! a-playin' ball
 Or otherwise enjoyin' each fine day. 

 It seem'st a shame for boys to have to stay
Like culprits shut in by a prison wall!
 I guess if you get rich folks wilt not care
 If you don'tst know your grammar to a T,
For baby boys, you'llst find 'most everywhere,
Art named for uncles who hast money, see?
Though they hain'tst got no learnin' they canst spare
Nor never spell their 'taters with a p.

Dashed Off XIX

This completes the notebook that was finished in April 2024.

**** 

In myths the world is less personified than not depersonified.

Texts detached from communities are mere residues.

Reactive attitudes are
(a) formats of communication or address
(b) in the action of one moral person (A) to another (B)
(c) on the basis of how (A) classifies the actions of (B)
(d) in light of expectation or demand for good relations between (A) and (B) in community.
-- Sometimes the structure attributed to reactive attitudes is nto A to B but A to B on behalf of C
personal: A to B on behalf of A
vicarious: A to B on behalf of B or C
self-reaction: A to A on behalf of A
Perhaps we should actually distinguish direct and indirect reactive attitudes.
-- the issue of 'A to B in light of abstract commitment'. Perhaps 'personal investment', 'abstract commitment', and 'behalf of another'.
-- Hieronymi: "a reactive attitude is x's reaction to x's perception of or beliefs about the quality of y's will toward z. In the impersonal reactive attitudes, x, y, and z are different persons. In the case of the personal reactive attitudes, teh same person stands in for x and z. In the case of self-directed attitudes, the same person stands in for x and y."
-- Strawson: "Just as there are personal and vicarious reactive attitudes associated with demans on others for oneself and demands on others for others, so there are self-reactive attitudes associated with demans on oneself for others."

Olivi's seven affects proclaiming free choice (from his commentary on the Sentences)
(1) affectus zeli et misericordiae
(2) affectus gloriationis et erubescentiae
(3) affectus amicitiae et inimicitiae
(4) affects ingratitudinis et gratitudinis
(5) affectus subjectionis seu reverentiae et dominationis seu liberatis invictae et beatae
(6) affectus spei et diffidentiae
(7) affectus timoris et sollicitudinis
-- The essential idea is that reasonable people do not assume these affect against evils performed by what does not have 'the free use of reason'. If we had no free will, these affects would require assuming falsehoods. But it is inexplicable, even impossible, for all these affects to be based entirely on such falsehoods. Each of these is a recognition of reason qua free; the best explanation for such a recognition is that reason can be reason qua free; the only explanation for so many different such recognitions is that there is free use of reason.

Human commitment to participation in ordinary interpersonal relationships is too thoroughgoing and deeply rooted for us consistently to accept a general theoretical commitment that suggests that these ordinary interpersonal relationships are unreasonable or falsely grounded.

We are natural persons who must grow into being persons, and on the process of doing so give ourselves artificial personhoods. We are potential persons developing as person by way of making ourselves persons.

faith : reason :: reason : passion

the material as that which requires something else to be intelligible

"The humble man no longer presumes to determine where he stands; he leaves it to God." Dietrich von Hildebrand
"The most perfect state or nation cannot glorify God as much as a perfect marriage."

The quality of any afterfaith depends on the quality fo the faith.

Legal systems arise naturally even if we assume that all particular laws are artificial.

"Perhaps every new learning makes room for itself by creating a new ignorance." C. S. Lewis

communion : eucharist :: satisfaction : penance

Christ is present in the eucharist as agent, as object, and as res -- agentially, objectively, and really/substantially.

Kant's Analogies of Experience as ways of thinking about the unity fo the world through unities of experience

formats of sacramental confession
(1) public general: used only for emergencies (e.g., immanent death)
(2) public personal: most common in ancient church
(3) private
formats of sacramental satisfaction
(1) public: order of penitents
(2) public: personal
(3) private: penitential pilgrimage
(4) private: vow
(5) private: prayer

spacetime as a symbol of providence

A 'moral cause' is that which gives reason to the 'physical cause'.

Human beings form legal systems because human reason already has the features that we externalize into legal systems.

Cognitive tool use is even more natural to us than physical tool use.

The sacramental character is a title to further grace, related to the exercise of priestly office. Thi sis true also of the covenantal bond in the Old Testament sacrifices and in matrimony.

physical causality
--- dispositive
--- perfective
moral causality
--- dispositive
--- --- precative
--- --- meritorious
--- --- juridical
--- perfective ?
occasional causality

teaching as shared light

Commands and counsels are instrumental dispositive moral causes.

J. Hogan's laws of ornament (Am. Eccl. Rev. vol 24, pp. 474ff)
(1) unity: The same style of decoration should be used throughout.
(2) subordination: Ornament should be appropriate to utility, place, and structure
(3) measure and proportion: There must be proportion of size and pattern between what adorns and what is adorned.
(4) treatment: The imitative forms of adornment should be conventionalized.

representing heraldic tinctures:
Aurum puncta notant
Argentum absentia signi
Linea staris rubeum
Caeruleumque jacens
Descendit virida in loerani
qua purpura surgit
cumque jacens stanti linea mixta nigrum est.

the three primaries of knowledge:
(1) fact: existing thinking subject
(2) principle: noncontradiction
(3) condition: intellectual aptitude for truth

"The mind while we are in this present life, whether it contemplate, meditate, deliberate, or howsoever exercise itself, worketh nothing without continual recourse to imagination, the only storehouse of wit and peculiar chair of memory." Hooker

Human narratives consist of oppositions and resolutions of oppositions.

farce as an insulation from terror

opificium --> officium (work-doing)

A certain pragmatism is required for heroism.

To consider: Any general condition on means of verifying certain propositions can ground a modality. For example, we can verfiy at a place, or a time, or with respect to a fiction, et.
-- In other words: verification and modality are related.

Some things are justified and yet can still be bad habits to let yourself get into.

ius = quod iustum est = ipsam reme iustam = dikaion

ius vs ius specified genitively vs ius specified datively

ius: 'a kind of moral facultas which anyone has concerning his own rem or a rem due to him'

"What the law of nature obliges to an end, ius gives to the means." Wolff

what is due us so as to be our own

Every right presupposes a standard of reason.

Eternal Life, Christian Liberty, and the Pursuit of Beatitude

Pontifex Maximus
-- Foundation of Collegium Ponificium is attributed to Numa Pompilius (Kingdom of Rome) as advisors to the rex in matters of religion. It was headed by the Pont. Max.
-- In Roman Republic a rex sacrorum was appointed the college to perform functions previously performed by the rex; he was deliberately restricted from actual political office and subordinated to Pont. Max. The Pont. Max., on the other hand, was a political office.
-- Julius Caesar became a pontifex in 73 BC and was made Pont. Max. in 63 BC (hence the Julian calendar).
-- The purpose of the Collegium was to maintain pax deorum. Most authority was invested in Pont. Max., with other pontiffs forming his consilium; the Pont. Max. specifically administered the just divinum: regulation of calendar and ceremonies, consecration of places and objects, regulation of burials, marriages, adoptions, inheritances. The Collegium also kept the archives of the state.
-- Marcus Aemilius Lepidus becomes Pont. Max. in 44 BC with death of Julius Caesar, and holds the post until 13 BC, after which he is succeeded by Augustus Caesar.; the title began to be an imperial title. In the Third Century, with co-rulers, there could be more than one Pont. Max.
-- Gratian is the last emperor to use the title, relinquishing it between 376 and 383.
-- Theodosius in 380, making Christianity the official religion of the empire, designates Damasus as pontifex (Peter of Alexandria he designates as episcopus). Leo is sometimes said to be the first to use the title of himself.
-- The official title today is Summus Pontifex Ecclesiae Universalist; but Pontifex Maximus is often still used customarily and in inscriptions.
-- the first Pontifex Maximus is by tradition Numa Marcius, advisor to Numa Pompilius; our list has a gap for the rest of the Kingdom and is patchy for the Republi.

It is custom that makes constitutional law, law.

Good custom has the authority of reason as well as the people.

"The food of the mind is ever accumulating, while its digestive power remains as it was." T. H. Green
"A great part of the discipline of life rises simply from its slowness. The long years of patient waiting and silent labour, the struggle with listlessness and pain, the loss of time by illness, the hope deferred, the doubt that lays hold on delay -- these are the tests of that pertinacity in man which is but a step below heroism."
"Man reads back into himself, so to speak, the distinctions which have issued from him, and which he finds in language. In this retranslation, he changes the fluidity which belongs to them in language, where they represent ever-shifting attitudes of thought and perpetually cross each other, for the fixedness of separate things. He has suffered and said 'I feel'; has contrived means to escape his suffering, and said 'I think'; but it has been the 'I' that has felt as well as thought, and has thought in its feeling."
"It is the true nemesis of human life that any spiritual impulse, not accompanied by clear comprehensive thought, is enslaved by its own realisation."

false titles
--- (1) titulus fictus
--- --- --- (a) not granted
--- --- --- (b) not granted for relevant case, place, time, or person
--- (2) titulus coloratus
--- --- --- (a) defect in grantor (e.g.,, if authorization has unknowingly lapsed)
--- --- --- (b) defect in grantee (e.g., if there is an unknown impediment)
--- --- --- (c) defect in concession (e.g., if obtained incorrectly)
--- (3) titulus simpliciter nullus
--- --- --- (a) grantor had no right to grant
--- --- --- (b) grant is manifestly defective in itself
[Titulus coloratus may suffice for jurisdition or other relevant authority if (a) there is relevant common error on the point or (b) the defect is curable, at least in principle. If the common error is common enough, or necessity intervenes, titulus fictus may also suffice.]

We human beings are often our own punishment.

thought experiments in analytic philosophy
(1) hypothetical instantiations
(2) idealizations
(3) what-if narratives
(4) allegorical fables (philosophical myths)
-- All of these require different kinds of analysis.
-- Analytic philosophers often have eccentric or even idiosyncratic visions about how to draw the lines -- e.g., many thought experiments in metaphysics are really (4) but analytic philosophers rarely treat them as such.

capacity to be and the boundedness of being (as measured by restriction among possible worlds to which it pertains, interpretating possible worlds in all its alethic-metaphysial ways -- times, locations, possibilities)

"It must be remembered that no art lives by *nature*, only by acts of voluntary attention on the part of human individuals. When these ar enot made it ceases to exist." C. S. Lewis

"Affirmation and denial is very often the expression of testimony, which is a different act of the mind and ought to be distinguished from judgment." Reid

Every religion seems to involve a system of courtesies.

fictions in which we are invested vs those in which we are not invested

to 'rekindle hearts in a world that grows chill'

"There are attitudes in man which disclose quite clearly the cahracter of his earthly situation as being a *status viae*. Such are questioning, longing, and hope." Dietrich von Hildebrand
"Philosophy implies a *wondering* about its object. In philosophy one 'wakes up' in a special way. When a man embarks upon a philosophical analysis of the world, he begins to stare at the world in wonder, instead of taking it for granted."

'listening acts' corresponding to speech acts

When we contemplate, we are as it were infused with what we contemplate.

transconsiderational identity of objects

All fictions have roots in reality.

(1) For a given Box and Diamond, not everything can be nonBoxish.
(2) Every Boxish thing is either fundamental or relative to more encompassingly Boxish things.
(3) There is a most fundamental kind of Box.
(4) Therefore there is a fundamental kind of Boxish thing.

the Holy See as an inheritor of Roman civil and tribal religion
(1) by supereminence
(2) by reception as Pontifex Maximus and as Bishop of Old Rome
(3) by long practical possession

insights as droplets and drops

In the right context, everyone is a dramatic personality.

A 'state of affairs' is an arbitrary slice of 'affairs', i.e., of actions and passions.

Every social act can be (in principle) done on another's behalf.

"Hoc nomen persona significat substantiam particularem, prout subjicitur proprietate quae sonat dignitatem." Aquinas (Sent 1.23.1.1 co)

"Persona de sui ratione dicit suppositum distinctum proprietate and dignitatem pertinente." Bonaventure (Sent 1.23.1.1 co)

"Unus enim homo ex natura sua non ordinatur ad alterius sicut ad finem." Aquinas (Sent 2.44.1.3 ad 1)
"Natura omnes hoimes aequalis in liberate fecit." (Sent 2.44.1.3 ad 1)
"Dignitas significat bonitatem alicuius propter seipsam." (Sent 3.35.1.4A co)

All talk of possibility is a way of talking about the actual.

due process and legal courtesy as grounded in jural dignity

Gricean theory seems to work best for answers to questions, because answering a question is a case in which something like the cooperative principle ("Contribute what is required by the accepted purpose of the conversation") applies. Who does not cooperate, is not answering the question. And in this light the Maxims of Quality, Quantity, Relation, and Manner describe the conditions for answering well. But it fits so well because answers have a specific role within a larger conversational context, where that role is 'called forth' by that context, which sets an end requiring a specific kind of means.

Implicatures are often not completely required, but simply appropriate.

implicatures as often arising out of common patterns of cooperation as much as this particular cooperative context

When people give examples of implicatures, they often do not give sufficient information. The examples often really have uncertain or ambiguous implicatures.

An implicature is what is not said but ought to be understood.

The maxims relevant to implicature can vary depending on the context and kind of cooperation (hence stylishness, politeness, etc.).

What Gricean theory gets right is subordination of linguistic communication to ends; where it errs is in assuming one general and universal end. Sperber and Wilson do the same with less common sense.

One can work out an implicature by inference, and one can work out an implication by inference, but neither implicatur nor implication are inferences.

Figures of speech are not implicatures, but they may implicate; what expressions implicate may also be figurative.

"It is not love of liberty that makes men write Utopias." C. S. Lewis

Christ as archegos, making a multitude of others like himself in nobility and excellence, as an excellent family

The demos is hard to ennoble, but hard to corrupt. Both can be and have been done, however, by slow pressures.

pambasileia
-- The pambasileus has a phronesis so extraordinary that it exceeds that of the rest of the polity, thus making him a ruler that is not part of the city. In fact, he is to the polity as whole to part.
-- Aristotle raises the question of how, given the disparity, it would be possible to live in society with him (cf. Pol 3.19 1284a on the god among men, who can only be recognized by a wholly just society and inevitably is ostracized or executed by a less just polity). How does one shar ein rule with him? How can there be equality of justice between them?

Social facts are structured by reason, which is governed by natural law.

Bugbears should not be multiplied without necessity.

upward and downward transposition of ideas

Be prudent and charitable, and let God do the ecumenism.

The Duchess's Sequence of Ideas

I am currently re-listening to Dorothy Sayers's Clouds of Witness in audiobook, and enjoying the Dowager Duchess, who has always been one of my favorite characters, and is one of the few examples of correctly writing a person so intelligent that she has difficulty communicating with other people. 

 "He said what he thought," said Mary. "Of course, Lord Mountweazle, poor dear, doesn't understand that the present generation is accustomed to discuss things with its elders, not just kow-tow to them. When George gave his opinion, he thought he was just contradicting." 

 "To be sure," said the Dowager, "when you flatly deny everything a person says it does sound like contradiction to the uninitiated. But all I remember saying to Peter was that Mr. Goyles's manners seemed to me to lack polish, and that he showed a lack of independence in his opinions." 

 "A lack of independence?" said Mary, wide-eyed. 

 "Well, dear, I thought so. What oft was thought and frequently much better expressed, as Pope says—or was it somebody else? But the worse you express yourself these days the more profound people think you—though that's nothing new. Like Browning and those quaint metaphysical people, when you never know whether they really mean their mistress or the Established Church, so bridegroomy and biblical—to say nothing of dear S. Augustine—the Hippo man, I mean, not the one who missionized over here, though I daresay he was delightful too, and in those days I suppose they didn't have annual sales of work and tea in the parish room, so it doesn't seem quite like what we mean nowadays by missionaries—he knew all about it—you remember about that mandrake—or is that the thing you had to get a big black dog for? Manichee, that's the word. What was his name? Was it Faustus? Or am I mixing him up with the old man in the opera?" 

 "Well, anyway," said Mary, without stopping to disentangle the Duchess's sequence of ideas, "George was the only person I really cared about—he still is. Only it did seem so hopeless. Perhaps you didn't say much about him, mother, but Gerald said lots—dreadful things!" 

 "Yes," said the Duchess, "he said what he thought. The present generation does, you know. To the uninitiated, I admit, dear, it does sound a little rude." 

 Peter grinned, but Mary went on unheeding.

The quotation from Pope is actually (from "An Essay on Criticism", of course):

 True wit is nature to advantage dress'd,
What oft was thought, but ne'er so well express'd,
Something, whose truth convinc'd at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.

However, as is generally the case with intelligent literary use of quotation, the relevance of the  quotation lies partly in what is not quoted; the passage immediately prior to this passage is about poetic conceits; Pope is criticizing poets who rely on striking conceits rather than saying things in a way that's "just and fit", with "modest plainness" that depicts the natural truth with artistic grace. The Dowager is implicitly criticizing the young for not caring how things are said, but her modification of the quotation is an even harsher put-down of Mr. Goyles, who says things that oft were thought but elsewhere are much better expressed. 

However, Pope's criticism of conceits -- again, only explicit in the part that she is not quoting -- leads her to think of Browning and the Metaphysicals, who are poets famous for their poetic conceits. And the criticism that "you never know whether they really mean their mistress or the Established Church" is a hilariously good jab at the Metaphysicals; because they are (especially Donne) very "bridegroomy and biblical". But the "bridegroomy and biblical" conceits of the Metaphysical poets leads her to think of the passage in St. Augustine's Confessions in which he talks about the smooth-talking Manichaean bishop, Faustus, and she carefully makes clear that she means Augustine of Hippo, not Augustine of Canterbury, who missionized England, although not in the way that is meant when we speak of the work of the Church Missionary Society in the local parish of the Church of England. Augustine reflecting on his interest (as a rhetorician) in Faustus mentions, among other things, that he was already beginning to learn that truth and presentation come apart, and among the several examples he gives of this is that things are not necessarily true merely because they are rudely expressed, which is pretty clearly what the Dowager Duchess has in mind.

Even her potential confusions are theme-relevant. She worries she is confusing Faustus the Manichaean with Faust, in Charles Gounod's best-known opera, Faust, but this ties in to the theme, because Gounod's Faust was famous for being unusually good in its presentation -- modest and simple but powerfully expressed. Her confusion between mandrake and Manichee likewise also ties into the theme. A mandrake, according to legend, screams unbearably when pulled from the ground (usually with the help of a black dog), which ties back into the rudeness of the younger generation.

Links of Note

 * Roope Ryymin, On Perceiving Absences, Among Other Things (PDF)

* Alexander Sandgren, Swyneshed Revisited, on Liar paradoxes

* Claus Wilke, "I asked the AI" is not research, at "Genes, Minds, Machines"

* Richard Moran, Does Philosophy Need to Know Its History? (PDF)

* Richard Y. Chappell, Home Education Resources, at "Good Thoughts"

* Dan Zahavi, Edmund Husserl, at the SEP

* Georg Henrik von Wright, Is There a Logic of Norms? (PDF)

* James Chastek, Elevation and degradation by art, at "Just Thomism"

* Maxwell Tabarrok, Is Air Travel Getting Worse?, at "Maximum Progress"; his answer is, roughly, that the numbers show that it's grown cheaper and safer but less reliable and more crowded.

* Molina Crescente, The Conceptual Foundations of Contract Formation (PDF)

* Brad Skow, Flaws as Meta-Merits, at "Mostly Aesthetics"

* Cathy Mason, Why love matters most, about Iris Murdoch, on "Aeon"

* Anand Vaidya & Michael Wallner, The Epistemology of Modality (PDF)

* Edward Feser, Newman on capital punishment, at "The Catholic World Report"

* John Psmith reviews Vaclav Smil's Energy and Civilization, at "Mr. and Mrs. Psmith's Bookshelf"

* Cameron F. Coates, Aristotle's Ontology of Death (PDF)

* Clara Collier, The Origin of the Research University, at "Asterisk"

'Mid Balak's Magic Fires

 Heathenism
by St. John Henry Newman 

 'Mid Balak's magic fires
The Spirit spake, clear as in Israel;
With prayers untrue and covetous desires
 Did God vouchsafe to dwell;
Who summon'd dreams, His earlier word to bring
To patient Job's vex'd friends, and Gerar's guileless king. 

 If such o'erflowing grace
From Aaron's vest e'en on the Sibyl ran,
Why should we fear, the Son now lacks His place
 Where roams unchristen'd man?
As though, where faith is keen, He cannot make
Bread of the very stones, or thirst with ashes slake. 

 Messina. April 21, 1833.

Education and Friendship

 Education is like friendship: it brings help, comfort, strength, privilege and success. Friendship is unquentionably profitable. However, you must never value friendship for the profit that it brings. To treat friendship as a means is to lose the capacity for friendship. Your companion is no longer your friend when you begin to weigh him in the balance of advantage. So it is with education: the profit of education persists only so long as you don't pursue it.

[Roger Scruton, Untimely Tracts, Macmillan (Basingstoke, UK: 1987) p. 228.]

Fortnightly Book, August 10

 Due to an overloaded long weekend, I am a bit behind on this, of course.

Up to 813, one notices a progression in LeBlanc's depiction of Arsene Lupin. Lupin gets inreasingly dark, ruthless, and disturbing. He is not merely a brilliant thief; he is a dangerous man. This contrasts with the earliest views we get of him, which is of someone who is more of a trickster, the kind of person who (temporarily) outsmarts a version of Sherlock Holmes by finding a way to lock him in a house overnight at a key point, but thoughtfully supplies a picnic dinner out of both a respect and a desire to tweak his opponent's nose. He begins charming and stylish, in very careful control of his own public relations; he stays stylish, but in The Hollow Needle and 813, he loses control of his public relations, and he becomes much less charming. Some of this is just that the stories become a bit darker and Lupin's difficulties become deeper -- in Arsene Lupin vs Herlock Sholmes, he is playing a game with a clever opponent, but in The Hollow Needle, Lupin has too many clever opponents and cannot outmaneuver them all simultaneously, resulting in tragedy, and in 813, Lupin is in a life-and-death struggle, with all of Europe on the line. He's still very competent, but he doesn't really seem quite the miraculously hypercompetent character of the earlier stories; we find him often anxious or afraid or angry. This varies a lot, but it is certain that he becomes, overall, a darker figure. 

813 was originally intended to bring an end to Lupin, but in returning to him, LeBlanc faced a question of how to return to him. His solution to the problem was not to continue the story onward but to go back in time, and this provided the opportunity to return to the charming and humorously mischievous Lupin of the earlier stories.  We saw this to a limited extent with The Crystal Stopper, but we find it even more in the short stories and novellas written around the same time. These were collected in Les Confidences d'Arsène Lupin, which is usually translated into English as The Confessions of Arsene Lupin. All are set before The Hollow Needle. Most of them were originally published in journals in 1911, before The Crystal Stopper came out, but three were published in 1912 or 1913. When the English translation came out, it also included a short story from 1927. This makes for ten stories:

1. "Two Hundred Thousand Francs Reward!..."
2. "The Wedding-Ring"
3. "The Sign of the Shadow"
4. "The Infernal Trap"
5. "The Red Silk Scarf"
6. "Shadowed by Death"
7. "A Tragedy in the Forest of Morgues"
8. "Lupin's Marriage"
9. "The Invisible Prisoner"
10. "Edith Swan-Neck"

So this will be the next fortnightly book.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo

Introduction

Opening Passage: From the Middle English, as given in Armitage:

Sithen the sege and the assaut was sesed at Troye,
The borgh brittened and brent to brondes and askes,
The tulk that the trammes of tresoun ther wroght
Was tried for his tricherie, the trewest on erthe.
Hit was Ennias the athel and his highe kynde
That sithen depreced provinces, and patrounes bicome
Welneghe of al the wele in the West Iles:
Fro riche Romulus to Rome ricchis hym swythe,
With gret bobbaunce that burghe he biges upon fyrst,
And nevenes hit his aunes nome, as hit now hat;
Tiius to Tuskan, and teldes bigynnes;
Langaberde in Lumbardie lyftes up homes;
And fer over the French flod Felix Brutus
On mony bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he settes
wyth wynne,
Where werre and wrake and wonder
Bi sythes has wont therinne,
And oft bothe blysse and blunder
Ful skete has skyfred synne. (p. 20)

Armitage's translation:

Once the siege and assault of Troy had ceased,
with the city a smoke-heap of cinders and ash,
the traitor who contrived such betrayal there
was tried for his treachery, the truest on earth;
Aeneas, it was, with his noble warriors
who went conquering  abroad, laying claim to the crowns
of the wealthiest kingdoms in the western world.
Mighty Romulus quickly careered towards Rome
and conceived a city in magnifient style
which from then until now has been known by his name.
Ticius constructed townships in Tuscany
and Langobard did likewise building homes in Lombardy.
And further afield, over the Sea of France,
Felix Brutus founds Britain on broad banks
most grand.
And wonder, dread and war
have lingered in that land
where loss and love in turn
have held the upper hand. (p. 21)

Tolkien's translation of Sir Gawain (in my edition, the lines are broken oddly, I suspect through not having properly taken into account the initial capital, so I have here corrected them):

When the siege and the assault had ceased at Troy
and the fortress fell in flame to firebrands and ashes
the traitor who the contrivance of treason there fashioned
was tried for his treachery, the most true upon earth --
it was Aeneas the noble and his renowned kindred
who then laid under them lands, and lords became
of well-nigh all the wealth in the Western Isles.
When royal Romulus to Rome his road had taken,
in great pomp and pride he peopled it first,
and named it with his own name that yet now it bears;
Tirius went to Tuscany and towns founded,
Langeberde in Lombardy uplifted halls,
and far over the French flood Felix Brutus
on many a broad bank and brae Britain established
full fair,
when strange things, strife and sadness,
at whiles in the land did fare,
and each other grief and gladness
oft fast have followed there. (p. 17)

From Tolkien's translation of Pearl:

 Pearl of delight that a prince doth please
To grace in gold enclosed so clear,
I vow that from over orient seas
Never proved I any in price her peer.
So round, so radiant ranged by these,
So fine, so smooth did her sides appear
That ever in judging gems that please
Her only alone I deemed as dear.
Alas! I lost her in garden near:
Through grass to the ground from me it shot;
I pine now opporessed by love-wound dear
For that pearl, mine own, without a spot. (p. 94)

From Tolkien's translation of Sir Orfeo:

We often read and written find,
as learned men do us remind,
that lays that now the harpers sing
are wrought of many a marvellous thing.
Some are of weal, and some of woe,
and some do joy and gladness know;
in some are guile and treachery told,
in some the deeds that chanced of old;
some are of jests and ribaldry,
and some are tales of Faerie.
Of all the things that men may heed
'tis most of love they sing indeed. (p. 128)

Summary: It is the custom in King Arthur's court for great feasts to be recognized by adventure: the king will not eat until some wonderful adventure arises. And when the court is at Camelot on Christmas, the Lord's own feast, a great wonder comes to the court. A Green Knight comes to the court with a challenge. It is common for knights to be designated by colors (Red Knight, Black Knight, and so forth), but in this case the color is not merely heraldic. The knight is green of face, and of hair, and of armor, and of steed. The challenge he brings is a stroke-for-stroke. He has a magnificent axe, which one of the court will use to give him a single stroke, from which the Green Knight will not defend himself, and will receive the axe as a prize. And then one year later, at New Year's, the same person will meet the Green Knight at his Green Chapel, and receive a stroke in return, on the same terms. Everyone is a bit taken aback at this game, but when the Green Knight mocks them, for their hesitation, King Arthur rises to meet the challenge. However, Sir Gawain, the king's nephew, asks to do it in his place, and this is accepted. The Green Knight bares his neck, Sir Gawain cuts off his head in a single stroke. But then the Green Knight grabs his head by the hair, remounts his steed, and reminds them all that Sir Gawain is due to receive a similar blow in turn, come New Year's.

After All Hallows', Sir Gawain sets out to find the Green Chapel, and wanders over a great portion of the kingdom searching for it. By Christmas he comes to an excellent and hospitable castle, whose lord and lady welcome him heartily. After celebrating Christmas, Sir Gawain intends to set off again, with three days to go, but the lord tells him that the Green Chapel is less than half a day away, so he can stay until the day appointed. The lord proposes a game in the meantime. At the end of the day, each will give the other whatever they win during the day. Each morning, the lord goes out hunting, and each day he gives Sir Gawain what he gained from the hunt. The lady seems a bit of a hunter, too, since each day she tries to seduce Sir Gawain. Sir Gawain, of course, is the model of knightly courtesy, and in all the legends is known for his extraordinary politeness and gentleness toward women, so despite not being seduced, he goes along with the lady's games without crossing any actual lines. The lady, however, uses his courtesy against him, and uses this to maneuver Sir Gawain each day into a kiss, although he refuses to go further than that. And, every evening he gives the lord of the castle a kiss, thus giving to the lord what he gained during the day. However, as the day approaches, the lady offers him, along with three kisses, a girdle of green and gold which, she claims, will make him immune to the axe stroke. Sir Gawain takes it, and does not give it to the lord as part of the game, returning only the kisses.

On New Year's, Sir Gawain goes to the Green Chapel, where he meets the Green Knight, ready with his axe. Sir Gawain flinches from the first attempt, which is aborted, for which he is mocked by the Green Knight, but insists on going through with the game. The Green Knight tests his nerve with a fake attempt, and when Sir Gawain angrily tells him to do it, the Green Knight delivers his strike, cutting Sir Gawain slightly on the neck. He then tells Sir Gawain that he is the lord of the castle, acting on behalf of Morgan, the sister of King Arthur, and he has been impressed with Sir Gawain. Only one small fault had marred Sir Gawain's extraordinary chivalry: he had kept back the green girdle. Each blow had been a symbol of one of the days of the winnings game, and Sir Gawain only received any wound at all because of the girdle. The Green Knight, whose name is Sir Bertilak, doesn't blame him much for that -- he was, after all, facing likely death -- but Sir Gawain is devastated by his failure. When he returns to court, he manfully tells the truth about his failiure. The court is also not inclined to blame (and as Tolkien points out, there is no greater authority on chivalry than King Arthur's court), but it does not make Sir Gawain feel any better; he will always wear a green girdle as a sash, as a reminder of his failure. In response, the ladies and knights begin wearing green sashes in honor of Sir Gawain.

In some ways, this is a story of penitence. It is because Sir Gawain constantly examines himself and reminds himself of the ideal that he is the greatest exemplar of knighthood. His external temptations aim at what seem to be his strengths -- his courteousness, in particular -- turning them against him, but he manages to navigate the difficult situation. The temptation that actually wounds him is his fear of death, and even then it is an apparently slight failure -- indeed, as everyone else points out, it is nothing but a slight failure. But for Sir Gawain it is cowardice and discourtesy, and he is not wrong, either. He confesses his fault before the chivalrous court, and does satisfaction for it, by the green sash; but his fault repented is itself a badge of honor. 

Tolkien also translates Pearl, which is one of the poems in the same manuscript that preserved Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The narrator has a vision or dream of a queenly and heavenly maiden across a river, who is repeatedly called a pearl. (Some have suggested that the infant's name was the very popular girl's name of Margaret, which means 'Pearl'.) As the poem goes on, we learn that the narrator knows the maiden, but that she had actually died before she was around two years old, and that she is related to him. While it's never strictly said, it is strongly implied that she is his dead infant daughter. The narrator struggles with understanding how an infant who knew neither Creed nor prayer could be made a queen in heaven. In this sense, the poem is about infant baptism, and is perhaps one of the greatest literary discussions of the subject. The dreamer eventually tries to cross the river to join the Pearl in the heavenly city, which he had been forbidden to do, and he awakes.

Sir Orfeo is a completely unconnected work by a completely different author, but it shares with Sir Gawain and Pearl the themes of death and of crossing a boundary into a strange realm; it is, of course, a medieval retelling of the Orpheus story, with Orpheus as a knight rescuing his kidnapped wife from the fairy king. Sir Orfeo, however, has a happier ending than the original Orpheus.

I read Sir Gawain in three versions -- the Armitage translation had both the Middle English and Simon Armitage's translation, and then I also read Tolkien's, of course. They were all quite good. I liked many of Tolkien's translation choices better as a narrative matter, but Armitage's translation mostly does very well at taking a story that uses a difficult set of poetic tools and providing a very readable translation that manages to use a lot of similar poetic tools. I also listened to Armitage's translation in audiobook, which was very nice, at least when I listened at 1.5x (as is sometimes common in audiobooks, the 1x speed is very, very slow; my brain cannot quite slow down that much).

Favorite Passage: My favorite passage has always been the passage in which Sir Gawain's symbol -- the Pentangle on his shield -- is explained. Here is part of it, in the original:

The fyft fyve that I finde that the frek used
Was fraunchyse and felwschyp forbe al thyng;
His clannes and his cortaysye croked were never,
and pite, that passes alle poyntes -- thyse pure fyve
Were harder happed on that hathel then on any other. (p. 64)

In Armitage's translation:

The fifth set of five which I heard the knight followed
included friendship and fraternity with fellow men,
purity and politeness that impressed at all times,
and pity, which surpassed all pointedness. Five things
which meant more to Gawain than to most other men. (p. 65)

In Tolkien's translation:

The fifth five that was used, as I find, by this knight
was free-giving and friendliness first before all,
and chastity and chivalry ever changeless and straight,
and piety surpassing all points: these perfect five
were hasped upon him harder than on any man else. (p. 36)

Recommendation: The original and both translations are Highly Recommended.

****

Simon Armitage (tr.), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, W. W. Norton & Company  (New York: 2007).

J. R. R. Tolkien (tr.), Sir Gawan and the Green Knight, Pearl, Sir Orfeo,  Christopher Tolkien, ed., HarperCollins (London: 1975).