Pearl: An Edition with Verse Translation

By William Vantuono

Book Overview

The anonymous author of the poem Pearl 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 Pearl 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.

Pearl is the first of four poems in a manuscript dated around 1400 A.D. The other three poems in this manuscript are Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. According to Vantuono's introduction, it is conceivable that Pearl 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 Pearl: Was he a layman or a priest? Is Pearl 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?

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. Pearl: An Edition with Verse Translation 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.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0268038112
• ISBN13: 9780268038113
• Release Date: December 1995
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Length: 290 Pages
• Weight: 1.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

Vantuono's "Pearl": The Best One-volume Edition of the Poem

As a young but informed student of medieval English literature, I consider "Pearl" the most profound and beautiful work ever composed in English. However, the audience for the poem has seldom ventured beyond the realm of specialists and lucky students like me. William Vantuono's unbelievably thorough edition of "Pearl" presents a new opportunity for the poem to reach a wider audience. Its main feature is the complete Middle English text with a facing-page verse translation (the first of its kind with "Pearl"). However, it includes every possible piece of information relevant to the poem's many complex issues (authorship; manuscript origin and dating; poetic structure and themes; linguistic and metrical features). In addition, Vantuono provides an exhaustive bibliography for those interested in the wide range of scholastic work submitted on the poem. In short, Vantuono's edition is the best compilation of materials about "Pearl" on the market. For those who are familiar with E.V. Gordon's standard scholarly edition of "Pearl," I would say that Gordon's edition is still unrivaled for its linguistic apparatus; however, Vantuono's bibliography and up-to-the-minute summary of conjecture concerning authorship of the poem make his edition a must-have for any person or student interested in the poem. As for Vantuono's verse translation, I still think that Marie Borroff's verse translation (Norton, 1977) has no equal, but Vantuono's adequately preserves the rhyme and alliterative qualities of the Middle English.