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  • The Signifying Power of Pearl: Medieval Literary and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre by Jane Beal
  • Anke Bernau
The Signifying Power of Pearl: Medieval Literary and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre. By Jane Beal. Routledge Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture, 5. New York and London: Routledge, 2017. Pp. xv + 179; 4 illustrations. $150.00.

In her conclusion to The Signifying Power of Pearl: Medieval Literary and Cultural Contexts for the Transformation of Genre, Jane Beal argues that at the heart of the poem lies “the Dreamer’s memory of trauma” (p. 137). Pearl is about the gradual transformation of this memory—from individual, devastating loss to collective, redemptive hope—through a recognition of shared suffering and love.

The poem’s final lines, recalling the loss of the pearl within the context of communion, show us how “past sacrifice” and “Christ’s future return” come together (p. 152). In this way “the Dreamer’s memory of trauma is illuminated, redeemed, and restored” through a healing process that is made available to all (Christian) readers “as they journey with whole-hearted humility deeper into Christ’s redemptive suffering and God’s redeeming love” (p. 152). Beal’s evident dedication to Pearl is rooted in scholarly and educational commitments (she has recently published a co-edited volume on Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl) as well as in her own faith. The latter is evident not only in the conclusion of The Signifying Power of Pearl, but on the very first page of its introduction. Here Beal explains that her sense of the poem as “an almost inexhaustible source of beauty, wisdom, and strength in times of loss or sorrow” is linked to her perception of it “as an intrinsically Christian work of art”: “I admire it for the way that it makes me, a woman of faith, see truth again from new angles” (p. 1).

The structure and overarching argument of the volume are based on the model of fourfold interpretation of scripture. The aim of this volume is “to see a [End Page 252] connection between the four levels of meaning and a way to speak to the genre debates that have raged over the poem for more than a century and a half” (p. 10). Its contention, repeated throughout the volume, is that the poem “certainly participates in multiple genres” (pp. 85, 107), and that this generic diversity allows the poem to be approached and understood in different ways—ways which, however, finally unite and culminate in a heightened understanding of Christ’s sacrifice and the hope it brings. Thus, the book’s chapters set out to show how the poet wrote a poem that is not only literally an elegy, spiritually an allegory, morally a consolation, and anagogically a revelation. As Beal argues, it is also a poem intended for common speakers of the English language, living in late-medieval England, who had listened throughout their lives to the folk-tales of their time: parables, fables, and fairy tales (p. xviii).

Chapter 1, “Literal Sense: Desiring the Beloved,” argues for a reading of the relationship between Dreamer and Maiden as that of former lovers rather than father and daughter. Establishing this is important for the remaining argument in two ways: first, because the “taint of incestuous implication” (p. 11) would contradict “the religious symbolism and theological import” (p. 22) of the poem; secondly, because later chapters build on this possibility by suggesting comparisons to the stories of Orpheus and Eurydice (chapter 2) as well as Cupid and Psyche (chapter 5). The argument in the first chapter relies heavily on an interpretation of the images that accompany the poem in the manuscript and the language of courtly love (based primarily on the Song of Songs) found in religious and secular lyrics, as well as in Marian devotion.

Chapter 2, “Allegorical Meaning: Rejoicing in Salvation,” focuses on the scholarly debate over whether the poem is to be read as an elegy or an allegory. It suggests that both ways of reading can fruitfully be brought into play and goes on to consider “the...

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