The Pearl Poet Revisited by Sandra Pierson Prior (review)

REVIEWS SANDRA PIERSON PRIOR. The Pearl Poet Revisited. Twayne's English Au­ thors Series, vol. 512. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1994. Pp. xi, 161. $23.95. Instructors of fourteenth-century English poetry have long been in need of a handbook that introduces students, specifically undergraduates, to the language, versification, literary environment, and cultural background of the Pearl-poet. The publication of Sandra Pierson Prior's The Pearl Poet Revisited meets this need admirably. The first-time reader, for whom this book is intended, will benefit most from the attention given in each chap­ ter to basic details and anticipated needs, but discussion of the individual poems is scholarly and comprehensive enough to reward advanced readers and specialists as well. As one would expect, a number of useful aids are conveniently laid out for the student. The front of the book contains a chronology of important dates beginning in the early fourth century with Eusebius's The History of the Church and concluding in 1864 with Richard Morris's publication of Early English Alliterative Poems. At the back appears a select but descriptive bibliography that encompasses editions and translations; bibliography and reference; background in language, literature, and history (the least satis­ factory or complete set of entries); and a section on critical studies, ranging from general studies to critical works on the individual poems. While by no means exhaustive, the critical bibliography is adequate for the audience intended. For many readers the first chapter, entitled "The Pearl Poet and His Time and Place," will prove the most valuable and most frequently cited. In addition to supplying general information pertaining to the poet and the fourteenth-century literary scene, Prior makes pointed remarks about the poet's dialect, about the life of the manuscript, and about the illustra­ tions that accompany it. Inasmuch as she believes emphatically in the centrality of versification to the efficacy of this poet's art, she devotes con­ siderable time and space to a discussion of his linguistic skill and the power of his verse to generate realism and a sense of action. Her attention to this aspect of his verse is instructive and clearly articulated; unfortunately, there are no concrete examples cited or analyzed at this juncture to illustrate exactly how this poet creates vivid effects, nor is the reader referred to specific passages that would apply. With the Pearl-poet, of course, the student is deprived of biographical information pertaining both to his social class and his education or to any 269 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER certain means of mapping his poetic development. Prior addresses this problem by adducing evidence to support composition ofthe poems in the late fourteenth century. Her discussion touches on the social, political, economic, and theological conditions of the period, the extent to which cultural issues are reflected in these poems, and the important difference that existed at this time between the court culture and the middle class or mercantile one. Based on the forms of the poems, their language, and their level of learning, Prior concludes that the audience for these poems had to be a court one. In this and in the succeeding chapters, Prior is generous and balanced in her notes, indicating areas of dispute among scholars and ap­ prising readers of responsible opposing views. To the credit of the book, Prior does not hesitate to identify or advance her own views, however controversial. She insists, for instance, that the Pearl-poet stands apart from most social and political issues of his time and place even though he wrote in a language that drew upon three older traditions (Anglo-Saxon, Celtic, and Continental) and during a milieu that witnessed the beginnings of an urban culture, an anglicized ruling class, and an English political identity. This flies in the face of recent approaches to the poet and to late medieval poetry in general and allies itselfwith Muscatine's assessment ofthe poet in his Poetry and Crisis in the Age ofChaucer, a view which has been challenged of late, especially in discussions of SGGK. In her chapter on SGGK, Prior confronts these new approaches head on. She questions the legitimacy of much recent feminist, cultural, and New Historicist...