Pearl: Image of the Ineffable, A Study in Medieval Poetic Symbolism by Theodore Bogdanos (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER is frequently hard to distinguish from the latter. In another instance strengh is retained and glossed as "force" rather than modernized to strength. This scrupulous attention to the language of the plays contrib­ utes to the value of the edition as a teaching text. Another, more purely practical point which makes it useful for both study and general reading is the running glossary at the base of each page. If anything, the editors have been rather too concerned about clarity and comprehensibility, and there is arguably some overglossing, as in the following instances: "tnjles-idle gossip," "ungentle-violent," "fable-tale," "besought-begged." This hardly detracts, however, from the value of an edition which brings to students,actors,and general readers the fruits of early drama scholarship in a most lucid and thoroughly useful fashion. DARRYLL GRANTLEY University of Kent at Canterbury THEODORE BOGDANOS. Pearl: Image oftheIneffable, A Study in Medieval Poetic Symbolism. University Park and London: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983. Pp. ix, 168. $17.95. In his introduction, Theodore Bogdanos points out the direction of his thought by saying that his intention is "to remind the reader that an interpretation of the poem's symbolism that recognizes all levels of percep­ tion and response, however multiplex and contradictory and even irre­ solvable, is truer to the fundamental mystery of Christian faith than any conceptualization" (p. 1). Having aligned himself with those critics whose primary focus is on the religious aspects of ThePearl, Bogdanos follows the sequential pattern of the poem in his orderly discussions of the "erber grene," the "fayre londe," the "dialogue," and the "NewJerusalem." In the first chapter the author makes the point that the imagery in The Pearl is based a principle which he describes as "incarnational," i.e., the conviction that spiritualmeaning is shaped by physical form, a theme that he develops throughout the book. Nevertheless, the narrator is the domi­ nant figure of the first part of the book, and the garden where we find him is the herb garden which reflects his soul and gradually leads him to the belief, Bogdanos tells us, that life springs from death. 166 REVIEWS As he moves into the chapter on the "fayre londe," the author offers the interestingview that thelandscapeofthe dream is anextensionofthe pearl symbol and that it is, unlike the "erber grene," hardened into a permanent beauty which, in the last analysis, represents the divine reality. Bogdanos takes pains to associate the brilliance and permanent beauty of the land with other medieval art forms, such as manuscript illumination and archi­ tectural detail. Despite its interesting content, the force of this chapter is somewhat less than it might be because of the author's efforts to establish stylistic similarities between the Pearl poet and earlier writers of dream visions and by the inclusion ofcomments on the dream classifications ofthe Middle Ages. Nevertheless, the main achievement of the chapter is Bog­ danos's discussion ofthe stream which separates the narrator from the Pearl maiden and which, in a sense, represents his ever-increasing frustration. In his discussion of the ensuing dialogue between the maiden and the narrator, the author points out that within the macrocosm of the dream landscape the maiden represents a lost relationship which is spiritual in character. This relationship is an expression of the central symbol ex­ panded into a form which is at once human and universal-thus restating her incarnational value. Bogdanos describes the dialogue in this section of The Pearlas "the fascinating exchange between the language...ofdivine love and human passion" (p. 80). In his evaluation of the section of the poem that deals with the New Jerusalem, Bogdanos considers the symbolic value ofimmutability and the intensity ofman's desire for it. It is no less than tragic, therefore, that the narrator's unitive effort fails for the time. "It is at this point," the author concludes, "that the dreamer and we are cut offinevitably from the vision of the ideal, and to be thrust back upon our reality-but with a new consciousness" (p. 142). Pearl: Image of the Ineffable is not a major contribution to Pearl scholarship in general; however, it offers a...