The Pearl Poem in Middle and Modern English ed. by William Vantuono (review)

REVIEWS sixteenth-century translation of Froissart's Chronicles. Two essays are con­ cerned with medieval art: Margaret Gibson's description ofthe panels ofa gothic ivory mirror case in the Liverpool Museum andJeanne E. Krochalis's study of the influence of English traditions of portraiture on Hoccleve's verbal portrait of Chaucer in The Regement of Princes. The monastic history ofRochester provides Glending Olson with an explanation for the Host's sighting of Rochester as he asks the Monk for a tale. Two studies depart from the Middle English focus of the collection. Helen Cooper explores the creative and intellectual points ofintersection in the works of Chaucer andJoyce, while Strother Purdy intriguingly suggests that much that is monstrous in Beowulfmay be simply Hrothgar's dream. I have been unable to dojustice to the intellectual rigor and argument of the essays in this collection in the brief space allotted me. But the editor should be commended for bringing together a collection of essays whose quality does justice to the memory ofJudson Boyce Allen. JOSEPH HORNSBY University of Alabama WILLIAM VANTUONO, ed. and trans. The Pearl Poem in Middle and Modern English. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1987. Pp. xxx, 110. $22.50 cloth, $9.25 paper. The Pearl Poem in Middle andModern English, the title ofthe newest verse translation of Pearl, by William Vantuono, raises the expectation of the reader on two levels. On one plane, it suggests two poems to be read independently: the Middle English Pearl edited from the unique manu­ script Cotton Nero A.x and a verse translation in modern English to be appreciated as a poem in its own right, like the modern English Pearl of Marie Borroff or Robert Fitzgerald's Aeneid and Odyssey. On the other plane-and that is the express purpose ofthe book-we judge the modern English text strictly as a translation ofthe Middle English original, particu­ larly sinceVantuono'sis only the second version, following Sara de Ford and collaborators, to offer the Middle English text and a verse translation in modern English side by side on facing pages. The main reader is therefore the student ofMiddle English literature in its original language and not a 197 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER general reader of poetry, as may be the case when a verse translation is published on its own to be enjoyed as a separate poem. What Vantuono says of his notes holds for his whole enterprise, namely, that it is "designed primarily to show the student how the translation process works." With this aim in view, Vantuono would have done better to relegatehis "notes"-a selective glossary giving theliteraltranslation of the Middle English in line sequence as deemed necessary by the translator­ from the back of his book to the bottom of each page. Though Vantuono's pages of text, both Middle English and modern, stand out to the eye in uncluttered clarity, the student of Pearlfor whose classroom use the text is primarily intended is better served when enabled to understand the many departures from the original in the translation at a glance. The verse form of Pearl is one of the most complex in any literature, medieval or modern. The task of the translator is to reflect not only the unique combination of deep emotion and intellectual rigor in the tone of the poem but also the craft of the poet in which thetradition of alliterative verse is combined with an elaborate rhyme scheme to form a tight numer­ ical chain in a circular pattern by which the end of each stanza is linked to the following in a grouping of word echoes and refrains. In addition, each line of translation, where it cannot follow the literal meaning of the original, is an attempt at interpretation, a commentary on the poem by the translator subject to personal idiosyncrasies. What strikes onefirst in Mr.Vantuono's translation is the strenuouseffort to maintain alliteration and rhyme-scheme at all cost. This often results in discordant notes, e.g. "foolisher" to rhyme with "jeweler" in lines 297-298, or, in rendering lines 1112-1116: As praysed perlq his wede3 wasse. Towarde pe throne pay trone a tras; J:)a3...