The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrún: Pre- and Reviews

[davem]

http://www.tolkienlibrary.com/press/...urd_Gudrun.php

David Brawn, the publishing director of HarperCollins UK, said: "It is an entirely unpublished work, dates from around the early 1930s, and will be published - all being well - in May this year. Otherwise the clue as to what the book will contain is in the title - THE LEGEND OF SIGURD AND GUDRUN. You will surmise from this that it is not a Middle-earth book, but we are confident that Tolkien fans will be fascinated by it."

[Bêthberry]

This won't be a translation, will it? A Tolkien retelling in his own narrative style?

[Rumil]

Cheers for the heads-up davem!

Looking forward to this one, especially as I've been remiss in reading any Norse legends!

[davem]

Found this, which speculates on the new book http://lingwe.blogspot.com/2009/01/n...is-summer.html

I suspect this work must be the “long unpublished poem entitled ‘Volsungakviða En Nyja’, probably written in the late 1920s or early 1930s. Tolkien described it, in a letter to [W.H.] Auden dated 29 January 1968, as ‘written in fornyrðislag 8-line stanzas in English: an attempt to organize the Edda material dealing with Sigurd and Gunnar’”

Maybe we can look forward to 'The Fall of Arthur' next?

[The Might]

Wait... so even more quotes to search for in "Minor Works"?

I don't know if I'll read it only because it is by Tolkien... I'll look up the reviews first and read other opinions and then decide if it's worth buying.

[davem]

Originally Posted by The Might

I don't know if I'll read it only because it is by Tolkien... I'll look up the reviews first and read other opinions and then decide if it's worth buying.

Its not another Children of Hurin, certainly. It belongs with Tolkien's translations of Gawain, Pearl & Orfeo. That said, its the tale of Sigurd & Fafnir the Dragon, & as Tolkien wrote:

"Best of all [was] the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable. I never imagined that the dragon was of the same order as the horse. And that was not solely because I saw horses daily, but never even the footprint of a worm. The dragon had the trade-mark Of Faerie written plain upon him. In whatever world he had his being it was an Other-world. Fantasy, the making or glimpsing of Other-worlds, was the heart of the desire of Faërie. I desired dragons with a profound desire. Of course, I in my timid body did not wish to have them in the neighborhood, intruding into my relatively safe world, in which it was, for instance, possible to read stories in peace of mind, free from fear. But the world that contained even the imagination of Fáfnir was richer and more beautiful, at whatever cost of peril."On Fairy Stories

[Bêthberry]

Originally Posted by The Might

Wait... so even more quotes to search for in "Minor Works"?

Some day, you might even have to add Tolkien's translation of Beowulf, just to mix up the lines from sagas, to the quote games, although of course after first deciding what is a minor work and what is a major work.

[Aaront596]

Originally Posted by Bêthberry

Some day, you might even have to add Tolkien's translation of Beowulf,

i want to read his two versions of Beowulf so bad i'm actually pretty ticked off at his estate for not publishing it yet. But it's good to here that some more tolkien is coming out and i'll be sure to snatch this up right away. Also good to hear that Christopher is behind it, but i still think the two beowulfs should have been published long ago.

[davem]

Guardian feature http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009...n-norse-legend