Pearl Poet

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The "Pearl Poet", or the "Gawain Poet", is the name given to the author of Pearl, an alliterative poem written in Middle English. Its author appears also to have been the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness; some scholars have suggested he may also have composed Saint Erkenwald. Save for the latter (found in BL-MS Harley 2250), all these works are known from a single surviving manuscript, the British Library holding Cotton Nero A x. The poet was a contemporary of Geofrey Chaucer, John Gower, and William Langland, who are sometimes called the Ricardian Poets (John Burrow's term), but nothing is known about the author except what can, with much uncertainty, be inferred from the poems themselves. Pearl may speak of a dead daughter (although the poem is not explicit on this), and the poetry is exceptionally conversant with learning, shows an interest in technical vocabulary about hunting and the court, the landscape of his region, and has an interest in poverty as a Christian virtue. However, the Pearl Poet never refers to contemporary scholarship like Chaucer does, and shows much more of a tendency to refer to legendary or mythological materials from the past (the Arthurian legends, stories from the Bible) than any new learning, so it is impossible to place the poet at court, the universities, or monasteries. However, he must have been educated and of a certain social standing, most likely a courtly poet.

All four poems of the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript are in the same Middle English dialect of Cheshire in North-West England. Chaucer was writing in a sophisticated London and East Midlands dialect with a large number of words borrowed from French literature. However, the Pearl-poet's language is equally sophisticated and adept at subtle verse forms, comfortable with intellectual debate, vigorous hunting scenes, and the arts of courtly conversation and wooing. He uses some French words as well as words from Old Norse and Latin.

The manuscript is unusual for the time because it contains illustrations of the poems. Very few manuscripts of Middle English vernacular romances contain any illustrations.