SOURCE: "The Pearl: An Interpretation of the Middle English Poem," in Sir Gawain and Pearl: Critical Essays, Indiana University Press, 1966, pp. 3-36.

In the following essay, Wellek asserts that Pearl is a dream vision that uses allegory to present Pearl as the object of divine grace.

A lucky chance has preserved to us two English poems of the fourteenth century which rank not far below the best we have from Chaucer's master hand. MS Cotton Nero A. X. (now A. X. 4) in the British Museum contains the only known text of both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Pearl. Since Richard Morris's first edition in 1864 the Pearl has found an ever increasing number of editors, translators, interpreters and admirers. The aesthetic qualities of the poem—its finished grace, the unearthly loveliness of its descriptions, the heavy brocade of its strange diction, the depth of feeling expressed...