Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight

In this esoteric study, Bahr (Fragments and Assemblages), a literature professor at MIT, delves into the “creative interplay of text, image, and matter” in the medieval English Pearl-Manuscript, which compiles four poems by an unknown author. Foregrounding how the manuscript’s physical features contribute to its meaning, Bahr argues that the illustrations bookending the poem “Pearl” mirror the allegorical golden enclosure mentioned in the opening line. Bahr advocates for a method of literary analysis he calls “speculation,” which involves “looking closely at what remains in order to trace the outlines of something not fully knowable.” For example, Bahr suggests that though many editors treat the one 11-line stanza of “Pearl” (the poem’s 100 other stanzas are 12 lines long) as a transcription error, it’s also possible that the poem’s author deliberately skipped the line to contrast humanity’s fallibility with the heavenly perfection of Jerusalem, as described in the poem. Elsewhere, Bahr suggests that the intersecting sight lines of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight in the illustration preceding the poem named after the pair “offer[s] a preview of the complex games (hunt, tease, bluff, requite) that the two men play.” The analysis is sophisticated, though some points are excessively granular, as when Bahr explores how marginal paraphs (calligraphic flourishes) “reinforce an underlying... four-line syntactic rhythm” in “Cleanness” and “Patience.” This will chiefly appeal to English scholars. (Mar.)