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Critical Essay by A. C. Spearing
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...
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This section contains 13,507 words (approx. 46 pages at 300 words per page) |
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