WASHINGTON – Move over, Baggins. It’s time for a more realistic hero to take the stage.
A previously unpublished work from renowned author JRR Tolkien will hit the shelves in 2013, this time based on ancient British mythology surrounding King Arthur. The author of “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy traded the prose style that made him famous for this roughly 200-page narrative poem, reports the Guardian of London.
Tolkien was inspired by the mythic tales of Geoffrey of Monmouth and Thomas Malory, the Guardian says, and based this work on the last days of Arthur’s supposed reign.
“It is well known that a prominent strain in my father’s poetry was his abiding love for the old ‘Northern’ alliterative verse,” said Tolkien’s son, Christopher Tolkien, according to the Guardian. He has edited the book and provided commentary. “In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight he displayed his skill in his rendering of the alliterative verse of the 14th century into the same metre in modern English. To these is now added his unfinished and unpublished poem ‘The Fall of Arthur.'”
Learn more about “The Fall of Arthur” at Guardian.co.uk.
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