SOURCE: "Pearl," in The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study, Cambridge at the University Press, 1970, pp. 96-170.

In the following excerpt, Spearing describes Pearl as an extended dramatic narrative in which the literal-minded dreamer interacts with the celestial maiden in a way that reveals the difference between earthly human relationships and spiritual relationships.

… In the fourteenth century the pearl could symbolize any of a very wide range of things; if a coherence is established within this variety, it is established by the poem itself, not by its sources and analogues.¹ In some ways it may be that we can better take Pearl as a guide to medieval symbolism than medieval symbolism as a guide to Pearl.

My purpose in what follows, then, is to read the poem with care: by no means an original aim, but more novel than it ought to be. It will be found, I believe, that...