''The Fall of Arthur'' is an unfinished poem by J. R. R. Tolkien that is concerned with the legend of

King Arthur King Arthur ( cy, Brenin Arthur, kw, Arthur Gernow, br, Roue Arzhur) is a legendary king of Britain, and a central figure in the medieval literary tradition known as the Matter of Britain. In the earliest traditions, Arthur appears as ...

. A posthumous first edition of the poem was published by

HarperCollins HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News C ...

in May 2013. The poem is alliterative, extending to nearly 1,000 verses imitating the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

Beowulf ''Beowulf'' (; ang, Bēowulf ) is an Old English epic poem in the tradition of Germanic heroic legend consisting of 3,182 alliterative lines. It is one of the most important and most often translated works of Old English literature. ...

'' metre in Modern English, and inspired by high medieval Arthurian fiction. The historical setting of the poem is early medieval, both in form (using Germanic verse) and in content, showing Arthur as a

Migration period The Migration Period was a period in European history marked by large-scale migrations that saw the fall of the Western Roman Empire and subsequent settlement of its former territories by various tribes, and the establishment of the post-Roma ...

British military leader fighting the Saxon invasion. At the same time, it avoids the high medieval aspects of the Arthurian cycle, such as the Grail and the courtly setting. The poem begins with a British "counter-invasion" to the Saxon lands (''Arthur eastward in arms purposed'').

Composition history

Tolkien wrote the poem during the earlier part of the 1930s, when he was

Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon The Rawlinson and Bosworth Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, until 1916 known as the Rawlinsonian Professorship of Anglo-Saxon, was established by Richard Rawlinson of St John's College, Oxford, in 1795. The Chair is associated with Pembroke Colleg ...

Pembroke College, Oxford Pembroke College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is located at Pembroke Square, Oxford. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale, and was named aft ...

. He abandoned it at some point after 1934, most likely in 1937 when he was occupied with preparing ''

The Hobbit ''The Hobbit, or There and Back Again'' is a children's fantasy novel by English author J. R. R. Tolkien. It was published in 1937 to wide critical acclaim, being nominated for the Carnegie Medal and awarded a prize from the ''N ...

'' for publication. Its composition thus dates to shortly after his '' The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun'' (1930), a poem of 508 lines modelled on the

Breton lay Breton most often refers to: *anything associated with Brittany, and generally **Breton people **Breton language, a Southwestern Brittonic Celtic language of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Brittany **Breton (horse), a breed ** Gale ...

genre. The poem had been abandoned for nearly 20 years in 1955, and the publication was complete of ''

The Lord of the Rings ''The Lord of the Rings'' is an epic high-fantasy novel by English author and scholar J. R. R. Tolkien. Set in Middle-earth, intended to be Earth at some time in the distant past, the story began as a sequel to Tolkien's 1937 children's bo ...

'' when Tolkien expressed his wish to return to his "long poem" and complete it. But it remained unfinished, nonetheless.

Publication history

The existence of the poem was known publicly since the Tolkien biography by

Humphrey Carpenter Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter (29 April 1946 – 4 January 2005) was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster. He is known especially for his biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien and other members of the literary society the Inkl ...

, published in 1977.

, '' J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography'' (1977 ed.), part IV chapter 6. Carpenter noted that the poem :"has alliteration but no rhyme. ..In his own Arthurian poem olkiendid not touch on the Grail but began an individual rendering of the '' Morte d'Arthur'', in which the king and Gawain go to war in 'Saxon lands' but are summoned home by news of Mordred's treachery. The poem was never finished, but it was read and approved by

E. V. Gordon Eric Valentine Gordon (14 February 1896 – 29 July 1938) was a Canadian philologist, known as an editor of medieval Germanic texts and a teacher of medieval Germanic languages at the University of Leeds and the University of Manchester. Early ...

, and by R. W. Chambers, Professor of English at London University, who considered it to be 'great stuff – really heroic, quite apart from its value as showing how the Beowulf metre can be used in modern English'." Carpenter also cited a passage from the text of the poem, to make the point that it is one of the very few instances in Tolkien's expansive work where sexual passion is given explicit literary treatment, in this case Mordred's "unsated passion" for Guinever: His bed was barren there black phantoms of desire unsated and savage fury in his brain had brooded till bleak morning After Tolkien's death, his Arthurian poem would come to be one of the longest-awaited unedited works of his. According to

John D. Rateliff John D. Rateliff is an author of roleplaying games and an independent scholar. He specializes in the study of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, particularly his Middle-earth fantasy writings. Early life and education John D. Rateliff was raised in Ma ...

, Rayner Unwin had announced plans to edit the poem as early as 1985, but the edition was postponed in favour of "more pressing projects" (such as ''

The History of Middle-earth ''The History of Middle-earth'' is a 12-volume series of books published between 1983 and 1996 that collect and analyse much of Tolkien's legendarium, compiled and edited by his son, Christopher Tolkien. The series shows the development over ti ...

'' edited 1983–1996), answering the demand for background on

Tolkien's legendarium Tolkien's legendarium is the body of J. R. R. Tolkien's mythopoeic writing, unpublished in his lifetime, that forms the background to his '' The Lord of the Rings'', and which his son Christopher summarized in his compilation of '' The Silmar ...

more than his literary production in other areas.Thursday, July 12, 2012 The Rumor
"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)."

References

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 200
The Fountain Pen Network
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fall of Arthur Poetry by J. R. R. Tolkien Modern Arthurian fiction Poems published posthumously Unfinished poems HarperCollins books 1930s poems 2013 books Epic poems in English

Composition history

Publication history

See also

References

Further reading

External links