One of Tolkien’s major academic works was the edition he prepared, with E.V. Gordon, of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Yet this poem is only one of four in identical dialect (an important point to Tolkien) and in the same manuscript. This paper considers the philological issues these poems raise, and shows how the theories, eccentricities and linguistics of the Gawain-poet were read and used by Tolkien
