The Fayre Formez of the Pearl Poet

Preface

PREFACE My study of the Pearl poet owes much to the mentors, colleagues , and students who have read this poet's works with me over the course of many years. In particular, I am indebted to Robert W. Hanning, who first introduced me to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight when I was just embarking on my graduate study, and who subsequently guided my dissertation on the Pearl poet. My study of the poet has taken many turns since then, but several of my best insights go back to Robert Hanning 's inspiring teaching and critical acumen; for the present form of my work, lowe him as well, since he read individual chapters at various stages and gave valuable advice for improving them. To others, too, who have responded to various portions of the book, I am grateful: to Sarah Spence, who willingly read several chapters of a study largely outside her field and who urged me to take a less plodding approach to incorporating the iconography and art; to Robert M. Stein, who was especially helpful with the discussion of the lyric features of Pearl in chapter four and pointed me towards the most relevant troubadour lyrics; to Edward W. Tayler, who not only read and commented upon chapter three with much care, but who, for the last several years, has been an unfailing source of support in all my scholarly and professional endeavors; and finally, to George Economou, who read the entire manuscript and caught a number of errors and offered other suggestions for general improvement . Any mistakes in fact, lapses in interpretative judgment, or infelicities of rhetoric that still remain are solely my own doing. I am grateful to the Department of English and Comparative Literature of Columbia University for support for the publication of this study. I am grateful also to the University of Chicago Press for permission to reprint portions of my article Xlll "Patience-Beyond Apocalypse," which I have used in chapters two and three. The article appeared in Modern Philology 83 (1986): 337-48. (Copyright 1986 by the University of Chicago Press. AU rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the University of Chicago Press.) In addition, some portions of my discussion of all four poems appear in the study of the Pearl Poet that I wrote for the Twayne English Authors series (The Pearl Poet Revisited [New York, 1994]). Although the Twayne volume was written after this one, it appeared in print some months earlier, so, in fact, the borrowings on my own work have been from this study, not to it. In any event, the overlaps are few, since the Twayne book takes a different approach and is aimed at a different audience. Finally, I wish to thank my children, Elizabeth, Michael, and Sarah, for their encouragement, support, and love. And, in gratitude for the love and joy ofhis short life, this book, like the dissertation that was its precursor, is dedicated to the memory of my son Stephen. XIV ...