Pearl

<p>The anonymous author of the poem <em>Pearl</em> is rated with Langland and Chaucer as one of the greatest Middle English poets. And while a number of editions of this poem have been published including E. V. Gordon's 1953 edition and Marie Borroff's 1977 verse translation no edition until now has included a verse translation Middle English text and commentary in one volume. William Vantuono's edition of <em>Pearl</em> is certain to become a classroom standard because it contains for the first time a Middle English text with a facing-page Modern English verse translation as well as extensive scholarly apparatus.</p><p><em>Pearl</em> is the first of four poems in a manuscript dated around 1400 A.D. The other three poems in this manuscript are <em>Cleanness</em> <em>Patience</em> and <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</em>. According to Vantuono's introduction it is conceivable that <em>Pearl</em> was written for a nobleman perhaps the poet's patron who had lost a young daughter. However many unanswered questions remain about the circumstances surrounding the poet and his writing of <em>Pearl</em>: Was he a layman or a priest? Is <em>Pearl</em> primarily elegy or allegory? Was the pearl-maiden his daughter and if she was can that fact be reconciled with the possibility that the poet was a clergyman?</p><p>This volume contains an extensive commentary covering all matters from minute textual problems to the various debates about the poem's theme and genre. Appendices discuss versification dialect and language and sources and analogues; two bibliographies list over 500 items through the early 1990s; and the book concludes with a full glossary. <em>Pearl: An Edition with Verse Translation</em> will appeal to scholars confronted with the tasks of studying and teaching medieval literature to students in college and university classrooms. It is a book designed for specialists and non-specialists students and general readers.</p>