In this study I aim to define and describe the poetics of a major medieval poet, a poet who is a skilled and careful craftsman, who writes primarily about biblical subjects, and who explicitly concerns himself with the truth of Christianity and the problems of fulfilling God’s will. Because I am primarily interested in the Pearl poet’s art and its forms, I do not draw on social, political, or economic contexts, although there are places in his poetry when such might be valid, and there are aspects of his work that have been successfully explored in such terms.¹ I often...

In the Pearl poet’s works the actual images of God Himself are rare – like the Bible, the poems of Cotton Nero A. x. avoid direct theophany, althoughPearlandCleannessoffer images of the experience of theophany (not theophany itself) and promise the beatific vision as a reward awaiting us in the world beyond. On the other hand, images of God’s kingdom, hiscortor theLombe’s meyny,to use two of the Pearl poet’s terms, are central to the poemsPearlandCleannessand stand behind the assumptions in the other two,PatienceandSir Gawain and the Green...

Pearlprovides the most visual and the most apocalyptic images of the divine found in the Pearl poet’s works. The other three poems are less explicitly and less exclusively concerned with theformezof God and his kingdom. Indeed, when taken in their respective order in the manuscript, the latter three poems move progressively further and further away from visualized and apocalyptic images of the divine.Cleannessis in many ways the most apocalyptic of the poems afterPearl.While picking up on the figures of the Wedding Feast, with references to the “frelych feste” (162) to which many are...

In the previous chapters I have been concentrating on the poet’s use offormezas visual and verbal signs. In addition to these meanings in the context of semiotics, the termfayre formezmust refer as well to the outlines and rhetorical structures of discourse – such is the more obvious use of the term in the context of rhetoric, and such is the primary meaning offayre formezin the opening lines ofCleanness.¹ Althoughfayre formezshould not be translated simply asexempla, exempladoes constitute one aspect of the rhetoricians’ broader meaning forformez,a meaning which includes...

WhileCleannessandPatience,the two of the Pearl poet’s works that are set in the biblical past, are fittingly in theformezof sacred history, the other two poems,PearlandSir Gawain and the Green Knight,which are set in non-biblical, post-incarnation time, are structured according to theformezof dream vision and romance, the most “medieval”formezavailable to the poet. Although there has been much helpful work on both medieval romance and dream vision, I believe we can get a better sense of the Pearl poet’s use of these genres by focusing on what the poems...