Pearl, The
PEARL, THE
A Middle English alliterative poem. The Pearl-Gawain MS, written in the last quarter of the 14th century, contains four alliterative poems, Patience, Purity (or Cleanness ), The Pearl, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This MS (in the Cotton Collection, British Museum) is the only extant version. All the poems are written in the same scribe's hand, but there is no agreement among scholars about common authorship. All the poems are excellent examples of 14th-century alliterative verse, but Patience, which relates the story of Jona, and Purity, which contrasts the virtue of Christ and the Blessed Virgin to the wickedness of all pagan gods and goddesses, are completely overshadowed by Pearl and Gawain; in the latter two poems Middle English alliterative poetry reaches its highest eminence.
Pearl, in 101 interlinked 12-line stanzas, is cast in the form of an elegy. The speaker, sorrowing over the loss of his not quite two-year-old daughter, falls asleep in his garden and is granted a vision of her. She instructs him about the joys of heaven, tells him not to weep for her since she is in the company of the virgins who dance before the throne of God, and finally shows him a vision of the Heavenly Jerusalem, with its golden buildings and towers of precious stones, as it is described in Revelation. The glories of the narrator's vision are matched by the ornate and intricate verse. Each stanza contains only two rhyming sounds, and each is bound to its fellows by the device of beginning each stanza with a line containing a key word, and closing the stanza with a line including the same word, so that one word runs through each of the sections as a unifying principle.
Pearl is now widely interpreted as an allegory, though critics are not agreed as to its significance. Allegorical readings generally suggest that the poem is concerned with the loss of grace or with a dark period in the narrator's spiritual life. Whatever the ultimate interpretation, the poem is obviously a powerful argument for submitting to God's will in adversity.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight relates in 2,530 lines the story of Gawain's exchange of blows with the
preternatural Green Knight, who survives a beheading by Gawain and demands the right to a return match one year later. Gawain's search for the Green Knight the next year ends in a castle at Christmas. The lord of the castle keeps Gawain there for three days, during which it is agreed that the lord will exchange the trophies of three days' hunting for whatever Gawain receives on those days. On two days Gawain receives kisses from the lady of the castle, who tries to seduce him, and he keeps his bargain with the host. On the third day he receives from the lady a magic girdle that is supposed to ward off all harm. This he does not give to the host but wears to his meeting with the Green Knight. The Green Knight, who only nicks Gawain's neck, reveals himself to be the lord of the castle and announces that all was done at the command of Morgan le Fay, to test the Round Table and to frighten Queen Guinevere. The poem is written in stanzas consisting of a varying number of alliterative lines, ending in one twostressed line followed by a four-stressed quatrain (a device known as the bob-and-wheel).
Interpretations of Gawain vary greatly. Among them, the poem has been regarded as a straightforward romance, as an allegory, and as a repository of English and Celtic myths. All critics agree, however, that it is one of the greatest of Middle English poems, and it is universally praised for the intricacy of its structure, controlled diction, sure characterization, balanced composition, and general high poetic achievement. Recent interpretations have increasingly stressed the religious aspects of the poem, and it may well be that Gawain represents the Christian in the world—virtuous, following his duty as he sees it, but occasionally fallible and in need of testing and correction.
Bibliography: Patience, ed. i. gollancz (2d ed. London 1924). Purity, ed. r. j. menner (New Haven, Conn. 1921); under the name Cleanness, ed. i. gollancz and m. day, 2 v. (London 1921–33). Pearl, ed. e. v. gordon (Oxford 1953); ed. and tr. m. v. hillmann (Convent Station, N.J. 1961), valuable introd, and notes. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. j. r. r. tolkien and e. v. gordon (London 1925); ed. i. gollancz et al. (Eary English Text Society, orig. ser. 210; 1940); ed. j. kreuzer and tr. j. rosenberg (New York 1959), with excellent introd. g. l. kittredge, A Study of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, Mass. 1916). m. borroff, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: A Stylistic and Metrical Study (New Haven, Conn. 1962). m. w. bloomfield, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: An Appraisal," Publications of the Modern Language Association 76 (1961) 7–19, invaluable summary of previous scholarship. sr. madeleva, Pearl: A Study in Spiritual Dryness (New York 1925), the first fully allegorical study. d.w. robertson, "The Heresy of The Pearl: The Pearl as Symbol," Modern Language Notes 25 (1950) 152–161. j. speirs, Medieval English Poetry: Non-Chaucerian Tradition (London 1957). d. everett, Essays on Middle English Literature, ed. p. kean (Oxford 1955).
[n. d. hinton]