Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl
- Editors: Jane Beal, Mark Bradshaw Busbee
- Pages: 262 pp
- Published: 2018
- ISBN: 9781603292924 (Paperback)
- ISBN: 9781603292917 (Hardcover)
“The volume is very well organized, and its usefully varied contents offer essays that should appeal both to medievalists and nonmedievalists teaching the course in surveys.”
—Randy Schiff, University at Buffalo, State University of New York
The moving, richly allegorical poem Pearl was likely written by the anonymous poet who also penned Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In it, a man in a garden, grieving the loss of a beloved pearl, dreams of the Pearl-Maiden, who appears across a stream. She teaches him the nature of innocence, God’s grace, meekness, and purity. Though granted a vision of the New Jerusalem by the Pearl-Maiden, the dreamer is pained to discover that he cannot cross the stream himself and join her in bliss—at least not yet. This extraordinary poem is a door into late medieval poetics and Catholic piety.
Part 1 of this volume, “Materials,” introduces instructors to the many resources available for teaching the canonical yet challenging Pearl, including editions, translations, and scholarship on the poem as well as its historical context. The essays in part 2, “Approaches,” offer instructors tools for introducing students to critical issues associated with the poem, such as its authorship, sources and analogues, structure and language, and relation to other works of its time. Contributors draw on interdisciplinary approaches to outline ways of teaching Pearl in a variety of classroom contexts.
Elizabeth Allen
Arthur Bahr
Jane Beal
John M. Bowers
Mark Bradshaw Busbee
Seeta Chaganti
Jane Chance
Nancy Ciccone
David Coley
A. S. G. Edwards
John V. Fleming
Eugene Green
Elizabeth Harper
Laura L. Howes
J. A. Jackson
Heather Maring
Murray McGillivray
Ann R. Meyer
Kenna L. Olsen
William A. Quinn
Acknowledgments (vii)
Preface (ix)
Introduction to the Volume (1)
PART ONE: MATERIALS
Classroom Texts (23)
The Instructor’s Library (36)
PART TWO: APPROACHES
Introduction to the Essays (53)
Historical Approaches and Contexts
The Authorship of Pearl (60)
Teaching the Language of Pearl (66)
Teaching Pearl in Its Manuscript Context (72)
Public Pearl (80)
Literary and Theoretical Approaches
Teaching the Allegory and Symbolism of Pearl (87)
Structures of Meaning in Pearl (96)
The Relationship between the Pearl-Maiden and the Dreamer (104)
Pearl, Pedagogy, and the Poetics of Enshrinement (114)
Christological Meditations in the Works of the Pearl Poet (122)
Comparative Approaches
Teaching Pearl with Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (131)
Teaching Pearl with Its Sources and Analogues (139)
Pearl as a Gateway into Middle English Poetry: Comparative Approaches (148)
Teaching Pearl When Teaching Tolkien (156)
Specific Classroom Contexts
The Trope of Translation in Pearl (164)
Performing Pearl (171)
Voicing the Debate (180)
Teaching Pearl and Landscape (188)
Pearl and Medieval Dream-Vision Traditions in a Graduate Seminar: Genre, Mode, and Gender (197)
Pearl and the Bleeding Lamb (209)
Appendixes
Appendix 1: Study Questions on Pearl (217)
Appendix 2: Illustrations from the Cotton Nero A.x Manuscript (223)
Notes on Contributors (229)
List of Survey Participants (233)
Works Cited (235)
Index (259)
