God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre in Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Cynthia A. Hatt. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015. Pp. x+249.

Jim Rhodes

doi:10.1086/691452

Ethan Campbell, The Gawain-Poet and Fourteenth-Century English Anti-Clerical Tradition. Research in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications / Western Michigan University, 2018, pp. 238.

Mediaevistik ◽

10.3726/med012018_427 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 31 (1) ◽

pp. 427-429

Author(s):

Jane Beal

Keyword(s):

Fourteenth Century ◽

Dual Language ◽

Pearl Poet ◽

Modern Culture ◽

Sir Gawain ◽

Link Type ◽

Western Michigan University ◽

Facsimile Edition ◽

Scientific Rhetoric ◽

Gawain Poet

In the past four years, there has been a flurry of valuable new work on the poems of the Gawain-poet (also known as the Pearl-poet), which includes new editions, translations, monographs, pedagogical studies, and online resources. Among the editions and translations are Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron’s excellent facsimile edition and translation of Cotton Nero A.x (Folio Society, 2016), Simon Armitage’s verse translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl (W.W. Norton, 2008 and 2016 respectively) and, I allow myself to mention, my own dual-language edition-translation of Pearl with supplementary materials for collegiate teaching (Broadview, forthcoming). Academic monographs include Piotyr Spyra’s Epistemological Perspective of the Pearl-Poet (Ashgate, 2014), Cecelia Hatt’s God and the Gawain-Poet: Theology and Genre (Boydell & Brewer, 2015), my Signifying Power of Pearl: Medieval Literary and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre (Routledge, 2017), and Lisa Horton’s Scientific Rhetoric of the Pearl-Poet (Arc Humanities Press, forthcoming). Editors Mark Bradshaw Busbee and I have published Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl (MLA, 2017), which contains insightful pedagogical essays from several professors. The journal Glossator provides a complete commentary on each section of Pearl, available online (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://glossator.org/2015/03/30/glossator-9-2015-pearl">https://glossator.org/2015/03/30/glossator-9-2015-pearl</ext-link>/), and additional resources are available at “Medieval Pearl” (<ext-link ext-link-type="uri" xlink:href="https://medievalpearl.wordpress.com">https://medievalpearl.wordpress.com</ext-link>). Now Ethan Campbell’s The Gawain-Poet and the Fourteenth-Century English Anticlerical Tradition joins the ranks, making a meaningful contribution to our understanding of the poet in his cultural milieu.

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V: The Gawain Poet and Dante: A Conjecture

PMLA ◽

10.2307/458313 ◽

1936 ◽

Vol 51 (1) ◽

pp. 31-36

Author(s):

Gordon Hall Gerould

Keyword(s):

Fourteenth Century ◽

Geoffrey Chaucer ◽

English Literature ◽

Piers Plowman ◽

Ample Evidence ◽

Sir Gawain ◽

The World ◽

Native Speech ◽

Gawain Poet ◽

Made In

The end of the fourteenth century, when Geoffrey Chaucer wrote, was one of the periods of great accomplishment in English literature. Chaucer did not stand alone. Wiclif's prose, the admirable poetry that Gower composed in three languages, and the powerful satiric verse of Piers Plowman give ample evidence of this. Among the poets of the time no one except Chaucer was greater than the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Pearl, whose name and personality are still unknown. Though a learned man of the world like Chaucer, he wrote in the dialect of northwestern England rather than of London, which must have seemed difficult to most readers even in his own time. Why he chose such an obscure dialect has never been understood. The writer of this paper calls attention to the eloquent defence of his native speech that Dante made in his Convivio, and suggests that the Gawain poet may have been inspired by it to do for his own dialect what the great Italian had done for Tuscan.

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Virgil and the Gawain-Poet

PMLA ◽

10.2307/459117 ◽

1945 ◽

Vol 60 (1) ◽

pp. 16-23

Author(s):

Coolidge Otis Chapman

Keyword(s):

French Text ◽

Divine Comedy ◽

Reading Habits ◽

Field Of Study ◽

Sir Gawain ◽

Romance Of The Rose ◽

Marco Polo ◽

Consolation Of Philosophy ◽

Gawain Poet ◽

The Rose

The reading habits of the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Purity, and Patience remain a fascinating and fruitful field of study. Much has been written about the books the poet read, or may have read, but it is unlikely that the catalogue of books owned or read by him has by any means been completely reconstructed. Of the books he certainly knew, the Vulgate is of first importance for its influence upon the poet's thought and style. Certain, but less important, are the Romance of the Rose and the French text of Mandeville. Of the books very probably read by him the Divine Comedy stands first, followed by the Vita Nuova and the Convivio, Boccaccio's Olympia, and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius. Less probable is his reading of Tertullian's De Patentia and De Jona et Ninive, the Travels of Marco Polo, Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica, the Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, the French lapidaries, and a few others still less certain.

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