Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight
By Arthur Bahr
The University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 978-0-226-83535-8
A single medieval manuscript in the British Library contains the only surviving copies of several of the most important Middle English texts. This book explores how those works and the manuscript that preserves them are inseparable.
Excerpt:
This is a book about a book: the small, cropped, somewhat ragged but brightly illustrated volume now known formally, and rather forbiddingly, as British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x/2. The fame and beauty of its four Middle English poems have given it sobriquets beyond the shelfmark, however, which are more familiar and intimate: it is also the Gawain-Manuscript or, as I will call it, the Pearl-Manuscript. The fact that Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (all of these modern editorial titles) survive here alone means that the literary character of these poems is bound up in this particular object, their material text. Although the identity, number, and intentions of those who collectively crafted it cannot be pinned down, this book will show that analyzing the Pearl-Manuscript’s intersecting aesthetic effects, across linguistic, visual, and codicological acts of shaping, affords fresh appreciation of its poems’ beauty—and may even transform our sense of what a medieval book can be.
Who is this book for?
This highly regarded book will appeal to two groups of medievalists: those interested in late medieval literature and those focused on medieval manuscripts. Readers in both camps will come away with a deeper appreciation of the other field.
“In his new study of the manuscript, Arthur Bahr embraces the mystery, spiritedly chasing after a book that will never let us catch up. He suggests that it is ‘a pedagogical compilation’, cleverly designed to provoke readers into reflecting on the limits and possibilities of meaning-making itself. It is not ineffable but ‘supereffable’, proliferating interpretations over the centuries. He has spent years wrestling with the damn thing and is still deeply in love with it: the book is dedicated ‘to the makers of the Pearl Manuscript’.” ~ review by Tom Johnson in the London Review of Books
“This book is a model for how to practice Middle English literary criticism and manuscript studies together as one enterprise. Bahr does so with expert skill, exemplifying a scholarly mode that is meticulous while remaining steadfastly unsuspicious of the medieval manuscript as a witness to literary brilliance.” ~ review by Seamus Dwyer in Speculum
The Author
Arthur Bahr is professor of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on medieval manuscripts and the poetry found in them.
Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight
By Arthur Bahr
The University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 978-0-226-83535-8
A single medieval manuscript in the British Library contains the only surviving copies of several of the most important Middle English texts. This book explores how those works and the manuscript that preserves them are inseparable.
Excerpt:
This is a book about a book: the small, cropped, somewhat ragged but brightly illustrated volume now known formally, and rather forbiddingly, as British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x/2. The fame and beauty of its four Middle English poems have given it sobriquets beyond the shelfmark, however, which are more familiar and intimate: it is also the Gawain-Manuscript or, as I will call it, the Pearl-Manuscript. The fact that Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (all of these modern editorial titles) survive here alone means that the literary character of these poems is bound up in this particular object, their material text. Although the identity, number, and intentions of those who collectively crafted it cannot be pinned down, this book will show that analyzing the Pearl-Manuscript’s intersecting aesthetic effects, across linguistic, visual, and codicological acts of shaping, affords fresh appreciation of its poems’ beauty—and may even transform our sense of what a medieval book can be.
Who is this book for?
This highly regarded book will appeal to two groups of medievalists: those interested in late medieval literature and those focused on medieval manuscripts. Readers in both camps will come away with a deeper appreciation of the other field.
“In his new study of the manuscript, Arthur Bahr embraces the mystery, spiritedly chasing after a book that will never let us catch up. He suggests that it is ‘a pedagogical compilation’, cleverly designed to provoke readers into reflecting on the limits and possibilities of meaning-making itself. It is not ineffable but ‘supereffable’, proliferating interpretations over the centuries. He has spent years wrestling with the damn thing and is still deeply in love with it: the book is dedicated ‘to the makers of the Pearl Manuscript’.” ~ review by Tom Johnson in the London Review of Books
“This book is a model for how to practice Middle English literary criticism and manuscript studies together as one enterprise. Bahr does so with expert skill, exemplifying a scholarly mode that is meticulous while remaining steadfastly unsuspicious of the medieval manuscript as a witness to literary brilliance.” ~ review by Seamus Dwyer in Speculum
The Author
Arthur Bahr is professor of literature at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His research focuses on medieval manuscripts and the poetry found in them.
You can learn more about this book from the publisher’s website.
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