This book differs from most previous studies of the Pearl poet by treating all of his works as a whole. Prior’s purpose is to identify the underlying poetics of this major body of English poetry. Drawing on both the visual imagery of medieval art (the study includes 18 full-page illustrations) and the verbal imagery of the Bible and other literary sources, Prior shows how the poet’s "fayre formez" are the result of a coherent and self-conscious view of the artist’s craft.

Each of these essays considers the convoluted nature of the transmission process in question, and reconsiders the historical framework that has informed our own reception of it."--BOOK JACKET.

"From Becoming the Pearl-Poet, students and scholars alike can learn about the Pearl-poet and the five poems attributed to him, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and St Erkenwald, exploring key ideas that will inform a deeper understanding and appreciation of this medieval English writer's work"--

Original and engaging, this study presents the four anonymous poems found in the Cotton Nero MS - Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight - as a composite text with a continuous narrative. While it is widely accepted that the poems attributed to the Pearl-Poet ought to be read together, this book demonstrates that instead of being analyzed as four distinct, though interconnected, textual entities, they ought to be studied as a single literary unit that produces meaning through its own intricate internal structure. Piotr Spyra defines the epistemological thought of Saint Augustine as an interpretive key which, when applied to the composite text of the manuscript, reveals a fabric of thematic continuity. This book ultimately provides the reader with a clear sense of the poet's perspective on the nature of human knowledge as well as its moral implications and with a deeper understanding of how the poems bring the theological and philosophical problems of the Middle Ages to bear on the individual human experience.

The moving, richly allegorical poem Pearl was likely written by the anonymous poet who also penned Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In it, a man in a garden, grieving the loss of a beloved pearl, dreams of the Pearl-Maiden, who appears across a stream. She teaches him the nature of innocence, God's grace, meekness, and purity. Though granted a vision of the New Jerusalem by the Pearl-Maiden, the dreamer is pained to discover that he cannot cross the stream himself and join her in bliss--at least not yet. This extraordinary poem is a door into late medieval poetics and Catholic piety. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," introduces instructors to the many resources available for teaching the canonical yet challenging Pearl, including editions, translations, and scholarship on the poem as well as its historical context. The essays in part 2, "Approaches," offer instructors tools for introducing students to critical issues associated with the poem, such as its authorship, sources and analogues, structure and language, and relation to other works of its time. Contributors draw on interdisciplinary approaches to outline ways of teaching Pearl in a variety of classroom contexts.

This book enhances our understanding of the exquisitely beautiful, fourteenth-century, Middle English dream vision poem Pearl. Situating the study in the contexts of medieval literary criticism and contemporary genre theory, Beal argues that the poet intended Pearl to be read at four levels of meaning and in four corresponding genres: literally, an elegy; spiritually, an allegory; morally, a consolation; and anagogically, a revelation. The book addresses cruxes and scholarly debates about the poem’s genre and meaning, including key questions that have been unresolved in Pearl studies for over a century: * What is the nature of the relationship between the Dreamer and the Maiden? * What is the significance of allusions to Ovidian love stories and the use of liturgical time in the poem? * How does avian symbolism, like that of the central symbol of the pearl, develop, transform, and add meaning throughout the dream vision? * What is the nature of God portrayed in the poem, and how does the portrayal of the Maiden’s intimate relationship to God, her spiritual marriage to the Lamb, connect to the poet’s purpose in writing? Noting that the poem is open to many interpretations, Beal also considers folktale genre patterns in Pearl, including those drawn from parable, fable, and fairy-tale. The conclusion considers Pearl in the light of modern psychological theories of grieving and trauma. This book makes a compelling case for re-reading Pearl and recognizing the poem’s signifying power. Given the ongoing possibility of new interpretations, it will appeal to those who specialize in Pearl as well as scholars of Middle English, Medieval Literature, Genre Theory, and Literature and Religion.

Twenty commentaries on the Middle-English poem Pearl GLOSSATOR 9 (2015): PEARL Edited by Nicola Masciandaro & Karl Steel “Innoghe”: A Preface on Inexhaustibility – Karl Steel The Arbor and the Pearl: Encapsulating Meaning in “Spot” – William M. Storm Pearl, Fitt II – Kevin Marti Pearl, Fitt III (“more and more”) – Piotr Spyra “Pyȝt”: Ornament, Place, and Site – A Commentary on the Fourth Fitt of Pearl – Daniel C. Remein Meeting One’s Maker: The Jeweler in Fitt V of Pearl – Noelle Phillips “Mercy Schal Hyr Craftez Kyþe”: Learning to Perform Re-Deeming Readings of Materiality in Pearl – James C. Staples Fitt 7: Blysse / (Envy) – Paul Megna Pearl, Fitt VIII – Kevin Marti “Ther is no date”: The Middle English Pearl and its Work – Walter Wadiak Fitt X – More – Travis Neel Enough (Section XI) – Monika Otter Fitt XII: Ryght – Kay Miller Pearl, Fytt XIII – A. W. Strouse The Jerusalem Lamb of PEARL – Jane Beal Fitt 15 – Lesse –Tekla Bude Out, Out, Damned Spot: Mote in Pearl and the Poems of the Pearl Manuscript – Karen Bollermann Seeing John: A Commentary on the Link Word of Pearl Fitt XVII – Karen Elizabeth Gross Theoretical Lunacy: Moon, Text, and Vision in Fitt XVIII – Bruno M. Shah & Beth Sutherland Delyt and Desire: Ways of Seeing in Pearl – Anne Baden-Daintree Fitt XX – “Paye” – David Coley

Through interdisciplinary readings of medieval literature and devotional artifacts, The Medieval Poetics of the Reliquary shows how reliquaries shaped ideas about poetry and poetics in late-medieval England.

Pearl resists identification by author, date, occasion, or place of composition; still it is almost unanimously hailed as one of the masterpieces of our literature, so skilled is its author, so eloquent its language. It is a story, according to Sarah Stanbury, "of crossing-over, the stepping out from the ordinary life into a parallel universe where things operate by different natural laws: down the rabbit hole, through the wardrobe or looking glass, across the ocean to be shipwrecked on Prospero's island, or more recently, across a bridge to the island of Willow Springs in Gloria Naylor's haunting novel, Mama Day, where the crossing-over moves into a place of memory and hope, the nostalgic space of home as well as Beulah or Eden, the earthly paradise."

This literary study offers a fresh view of the significance of the famous group of fourteenth-century poems, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It is a comprehensive study which puts the poems themselves firmly at its center, though it is always alert to relevant aspects of their literary and cultural context. John Anderson finds that the great fourteenth-century struggle, between religious and secular forces for control of men's minds, underlies all the poems. Despite its wide range of reference and the radicalism of some of its leading ideas, this book is written in a jargon-free style designed to appeal to specialist, non-specialist and student readers alike.