{"product_id":"the-fall-of-arthur","title":"The Fall of Arthur","description":"\u003cp\u003eThe Fall of Arthur  the only venture by J.R.R. Tolkien into the legends of Arthur  king of Britain  may well be regarded as his finest and most skillful achievement in the use of Old English alliterative meter  in which he brought to his transforming perceptions of the old narratives a pervasive sense of the grave and fateful nature of all that is told: of Arthurs expedition overseas into distant heathen lands  of Guineveres flight from Camelot  of the great sea battle on Arthurs return to Britain  in the portrait of the traitor Mordred  in the tormented doubts of Lancelot in his French castle.Unhappily  The Fall of Arthur was one of several long narrative poems that Tolkien abandoned. He evidently began it in the 1930s  and it was sufficiently advanced for him to send it to a very perceptive friend who read it with great enthusiasm at the end of 1934 and urgently pressed him  \"You simply must finish it!\" But in vain: he abandoned it at some unknown date  though there is evidence that it may have been in 1937  the year of publication of The Hobbit and the first stirrings of The Lord of the Rings. Years later  in a letter of 1955  he said that he \"hoped to finish a long poem on The Fall of Arthur \" but that day never came.Associated with the text of the poem  however  are many manuscript pages: a great quantity of drafting and experimentation in verse  in which the strange evolution of the poems structure is revealed  together with narrative synopses and significant tantalizing notes. In these notes can be discerned clear if mysterious associations of the Arthurian conclusion with The Silmarillion  and the bitter ending of the love of Lancelot and Guinevere  which was never written.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"My Store","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":44962866430005,"sku":"ByrdShop_0544115899","price":39.59,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0627\/8139\/0901\/files\/9780544115897_4c5182ac-7a17-4769-87ab-fe493c9a40a7.jpg?v=1772696377","url":"https:\/\/atxbooks.com\/products\/the-fall-of-arthur","provider":"ATX Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}