1. The Poems

This volume contains translations of four of the finest poems written in English during the late Middle Ages: Pearl, Cleanness (or Purity), Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Their survival in a single, rather modest, manuscript, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, constitutes a piece of notable good fortune, since without them the literary history of the period would be significantly impoverished. The manuscript can be dated to the very end of the fourteenth century. The poems themselves would have been composed somewhat earlier, probably between 1360 and 1390 – which makes them contemporaneous with the works of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. The dialect in which they were written indicates that the poet – or poets – responsible came originally from the North-West Midlands, perhaps Cheshire or Staffordshire.

Most scholars accept the theory that the poems were written by a single poet, who has generally been termed ‘the Gawain-Poet’ or ‘the Pearl-Poet’. Though we support this view, we do not regard the significance of the poems as in any way dependant upon it. We have, therefore, preferred – both here and in our edition – to term them ‘The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript’ (after Pearl, which appears first in the manuscript) rather than ‘The Works of the Gawain- (or Pearl-) Poet’. The theory of common authorship derived originally from two facts: that the poems are written in the same dialect and survived together in a unique manuscript. It has been developed and elaborated over the years, by exploration of various parallels, echoes, and similarities between the poems, which tend to suggest that they were written by the same poet. These include an unusual skill in the shaping of narratives, a profound familiarity with the bible and Christian doctrine, a willingness to retell or reflect on scriptural stories with remarkable freedom and invention, a sympathetic interest in the struggles of human beings to deal with the divine and the mysterious, and a wryly engaging sense of humour. Some scholars have attributed another poem, St Erkenwald, to the (hypothetical) poet, mainly on the basis of the similarity of the dialect in which it is written; this theory now attracts little support. Others have proposed conjectural identifications of the poet – most notably with Hugh or John Massy. No such conjecture commands any significant level of sup-port.