SOURCE: "The Pearl: An Interpretation of the Middle English Poem," in Sir Gawain and Pearl: Critical Essays, Indiana University Press, 1966, pp. 3-36.

[In the following essay, Wellek asserts that Pearl is a dream vision that uses allegory to present Pearl as the object of divine grace.]

A lucky chance has preserved to us two English poems of the fourteenth century which rank not far below the best we have from Chaucer's master hand. MS Cotton Nero A. X. (now A. X. 4) in the British Museum contains the only known text of both Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the Pearl. Since Richard Morris's first edition in 1864 the Pearl has found an ever increasing number of editors, translators, interpreters and admirers. The aesthetic qualities of the poem—its finished grace, the unearthly loveliness of its descriptions, the heavy brocade of its strange diction, the depth of feeling expressed—have become universally recognized. The linguistic and textual problems it offers have attracted an unusual number of Middle English scholars, and the wide perspectives it opens for speculations in biography, interpretation, comparative literature and history of thought have made this short poem a focus of combat and polemics, in which few Middle English scholars have failed to join. It may be time to look back at what has been achieved: to survey the state of research and to sift the chaff from the wheat and then to give a new interpretation, which would use the reasonable results of the labors done by others in a spirit of gratitude and add a few new points of view and hitherto unnoticed illustrations, which throw a little more light on this sparkling jewel.

The preparatory work, which scholarship has to perform, has been done well and fairly completely in the case of the Pearl. As we have only one MS to go upon, editing does not give us puzzles similar to the amazing MS labyrinths of Troilus and Criseyde, so sagaciously solved by Professor Root, or of Piers the Plowman, still waiting for a final edition. Nevertheless just because only one MS has been preserved, another type of textual problem is more numerous and free scope is given to emendation of the scribal errors and corruptions and the interpretation of difficult words and passages.

Sir Frederick Madden was the first to give a detailed description of the Cotton MS in his "Syr Gawayne: A Collection of Ancient Romance Poems"¹—he was at least the first who distinguished between the four poems contained in the MS (Pearl, Purity, Patience and Gawain). Richard Morris, in 1864, published the first edition of the Pearl for the Early English Text Society.² To Morris we owe a fair text, which has actually been improved only in details since. Sir Israel Gollancz was the next editor in 1891,³ but his edition, though it meant in some respects a real advance beyond Morris, was vitiated by unnecessary and fanciful emendations. A number of minor contributions in periodicals (by Kölbing, Morris, Holthausen⁴) followed in the next years up to the publication of C. G. Osgood's new edition, which came out in 1906⁵ and which meant again a distinct advance in the interpretation and illustration of the text, even if some of his conjectures do not commend themselves to a closer scrutiny. In 1921 Sir Israel Gollancz reissued his edition in an entirely recast form,⁶ which did away with most of the deficiencies of his earlier work. He uses also Osgood's improvements, though he unjustly denies to him any merit in the advance of textual interpretation.⁷ Gollancz's edition, in spite of new and ingenious emendations which mean the solution of many puzzles, still leaves some points of dispute open and is not always consistent and logical in its handling of some textual problems.⁸ Larger parts of the poem were edited by A. Brandl and O. Zippel⁹ and by K. Sisam¹⁰ and a number of important contributions to textual problems were published by A. S. Cook,¹¹O. F. Emerson,¹² and E. Tuttle.¹³ Still, there is room for a new and final edition which would incorporate these new results, pay more attention to the evidence of the meter and avoid the arbitrary conjectures of Gollancz. To Gollancz finally we owe a Facsimile reproduction of the MS for the Early English Text Society, though unfortunately the reproduction is technically not quite as perfect as we would wish it to be.¹⁴ Recently J. P. Oakden¹⁵ has made an attempt to show that the single scribe of the MS has based his transcription on a MS in which it is still possible to recognize three individual scribal hands, but, it seems, his elaborate theory is unnecessary to account for the phenomena he lists. Translations which can also be called contributions to textual interpretation include prose-versions in modern English, free adaptations and attempts to reproduce the exact rhyme and stanza scheme of the original and even a German and an Italian verse-translation.¹⁶

The establishment of the text naturally involves the question of the author's dialect and language and the place of provenance of the MS. The MS is undoubtedly written by a hand dating from the late fourteenth or early fifteenth centuries. The evidence found by J. G. Gilson¹⁷ points to the fact that it came from the monasteries of the North. The early dialectical research of R. Morris, F. Knigge, W. Fick, and Schwahn¹⁸ pointed to the conclusion that the poem comes from the extreme North West Midlands, probably from Lancashire. This conclusion has been contested by J. R. Hulbert,¹⁹ who judges "that the poems may be from the West Midland, but no significant evidence has yet been given to prove that location." He is altogether sceptical as to whether it is possible to assign a definite locality to the poems considering the state of our knowledge of Middle English dialects. "There is no good evidence to connect alliterative romances with the West; their language should not be called West Midland; and until new facts are found the only safe statement of the location of these poems is that they were probably written in some place which possessed a mixed Northern and Midland dialect."²⁰ As a solution Hulbert suggests a sort of κοινή, a conventional language "which had for its basis perhaps some particular dialect (possibly traditionally associated with alliterative verse)" which the writers altered "in the direction of their own native dialect."²¹

But Karl Luick in his monumental "Grammatik" has analyzed Middle English dialects much more thoroughly and assigns the poems of the Cotton MS to the type of dialect found in the Ireland MS, written at Hale Hall in Southern Lancashire,²² and also quotes Gawain frequently as having definite West Midland characteristics.²³ Using Luick's results, R. J. Menner assembled the evidence for the Northwest. Although he admits the justice of Hulbert's criticism of the older arguments for West Midland, he proves that we actually "possess certain phonological and inflectional characteristics which we have a right to consider West Midland rather than East Midland."²⁴ But he is careful to state that it would be dangerous to assign these poems to any particular county.

Recently J. P. Oakden²⁵ attempted to narrow down the area even further. On the basis of a complicated map of dialectical boundaries constructed by him, he assigns the Pearl to South Lancashire and North West Derbyshire with no preference for either. Because of the strong Scandinavian element in the vocabulary preference is given to South East Lancashire, extreme North West Derbyshire and possibly extreme South West Yorkshire. To make this location even more definite, Oakden makes an elaborate attempt to identify the castle of the Green Knight with the castle Clitheroe near the Ribble, which belonged to John of Gaunt from 1360 to 1398. But the alleged similarity of position is extremely vague and the accuracy of the map of dialect boundaries is also open to grave doubts.²⁶ Miss M. S. Serjeantson²⁷ recently made another very elaborate attempt to define the region of the Pearl more closely. She comes to the conclusion that the Pearl may have "originated in an area rather to the east of that in which Sir Gawayne was written." "On the whole, Derbyshire seems the least improbable area to which the Nero MS may be assigned, whatever the original dialects of the poems may have been." But the question does not seem to be settled and, perhaps, it is not possible to settle it with the means at our disposal. In the meantime, we have to rest content with the more cautious conclusions of Menner, especially as the importance of the dialectical evidence is extremely overrated. Though North West Midland must be regarded as the region of provenance, the existence of a special literary language which obscures more definite local traces should not be denied.²⁸

The question of the authorship of our poem has naturally attracted many minds. It would be a wonderful find if we should be able to hit on the name of the author of such a large and important body of poetry as the Pearl Gawain, Purity, and Patience. The evidence of common authorship of these poems is very strong indeed and should be absolutely beyond any doubt as regards the Pearl, Purity, and Patience. The evidence as to the common authorship of these poems and Gawain seems to me a little less convincing, though the metrical similarities and other links make also this identification highly probable, and the difference in tone and atmosphere can be explained by the French source of Gawain²⁹ Probably St. Erkenwald, that curious legend of London, is also the work of the Gawain poet, a view which was forwarded as early as 1881 by C. Horstmann and has recently been very ably defended by H. L. Savage in his edition of the legend.³⁰

But the attempts to connect a name with these poems have hitherto failed completely. There is not a shred of evidence for either Huchown or Strode, who have been suggested by eminent scholars. On the contrary, enough evidence can be brought against these theories to rule them out of any serious consideration. Huchown of the Awle Ryale can lay claim to nothing except the "Pistel of the Swete Susane," and both the Pearl and Gawain cannot be by the author of the "Pistel" if only on the ground of the striking dialectical and stylistic differences.³¹ Equally flimsy is the case for Ralph Strode, whose authorship has been defended by C. Horstmann and Sir Israel Gollancz. There was, it is true, a poet Ralph Strode who wrote a "Fantasma Radulphi" before 1360, but there is not the slightest evidence that this Fellow of Merton College, Oxford, was a Northerner or that he even wrote in English or that "Ralph's Spectre" is in any way identical with the Pearl. Moreover, it has been shown that this Strode was probably not identical with the logician Strode, who played some part in the history of scholastics.³²

Finally Oscar Cargill and Margaret Schlauch made a new attempt to identify the poet of the Pearl.³³ Though they have no positive evidence to go upon, they identify the child mourned in the poem with Margaret, daughter of John Hastings, Earl of Pembroke, and his wife Margaret, a daughter of Edward III. But they cannot even prove that the child died at the age of two; they have to quote a document dating from 1371, when the girl, born in 1367, was four years old and is unmistakably spoken of as a living person. Another document dated 1369, which makes provisions in case her father should die without issue, is certainly no proof— as the authors curiously take it to be—of the child's being actually dead by that time. Also the attempt to press the word "countess" in stanza 41 of the Pearl into a literal and earthly significance and to read some importance into the fact that the King has actually given pearls to the supposed mother of the girl are completely unsuccessful. On top of this airy structure Cargill and Schlauch erect a theory about the authorship of the poem. Of five servants of the household of John Hastings, who later came to the Court, they pick two, John Donne and John Prat, as the likely authors without deciding between them. John Donne was apparently chosen because of his name and not for any other reason, since he is mentioned in a document as "valet of the king's kitchen," and John Prat's case is not much stronger, as we have absolutely nothing to connect him with any definite piece of poetry. It is true that he is called the "King's minstrel" in 1370, but "minstrel" is a term for any fiddler and rope-dancer.

These airy theories disposed of, it will be best to turn to the text of the poem and to ascertain its actual meaning and purpose, as the external evidence has failed to render anything really significant. The history of the Pearl research shows that this is not an easy task, as opinions vary with almost every writer on the question. We shall give a brief but critical review of the main interpretations offered and then discuss the poem independently.

All the early editors and interpreters agree in regarding the Pearl as an elegy for the death of the poet's daughter. Bernhard Ten Brink and Sir Israel Gollancz have elaborated this theory in the greatest detail, and hence it has been taken over by almost all handbooks and literary histories.³⁴ Ten Brink was, I think, the first to construct an imaginary biography of the poet on the base of this interpretation: "Der Dichter," he fancies, "hatte sich verheiratet. Ein Kind, ein holdes, im Reiz der Unschuld strahlendes Mädchen beglückte diese Verbindung. Auf dieses Kind konzentrierte sich die ganze Zärtlichkeit des Vaters mit einer Ausschliesslichkeit, welche uns vermuten lässt, dass die Mutter die Geburt desselben nicht lange überlebt hatte. Da raffte sie im zartesten Alter die Hand des Geschicks unbarmherzig hinweg. Wie dem Vater da zu Mute war, sagt uns seine Dichtung; zugleich aber auch, wie er zur Fassung gelangte."³⁵ Ten Brink bases his fancy about the mother's death in childbirth on the mere fact that she is never mentioned in the poem, but even he seems nearer to asserted facts, if we compare him with Gollancz, who elaborated Ten Brink's idea in the introduction to his edition in 1891 and repeated his opinions, unshaken by any arguments directed against them, even in the chaper on the Pearl in the Cambridge History of English Literature (1901) and in his edition of 1921. Gollancz knows that the author of the Pearl was certainly no priest, he knows that his "wedded life was unhappy; the object of his life had disappointed him, and had perhaps proved unfaithful."³⁶ Nevertheless "his wedded life had brought him happiness-an only child, his 'little queen.' He perhaps named the child Margery or Marguerite. But his happiness was short-lived; before two years had passed the poet's home was desolate. With the loss of his dearest possession a blight seems to have fallen on his life, and even poetry may have lost its charm for him. The lyrist became the stern moralist of the 'Cleanness' and 'Patience'."³⁷ "'Cleanness' and 'Patience' were probably written not long after the 'Pearl.' But the vivid descriptions of the sea in these two poems perhaps justify the inference that the poet may have sought distraction in travel. It would seem that late in his life the poet may have found occupation in the City of London, in some secular office" and so on in the most fanciful strain. The text of the poems is utterly silent on the mother, on the name of the child, and flatly contradicts the idea that Patience and Cleanness could have been written later, as the metrical and artistic advance goes surely the other way round from the earlier homiletic poems to the much more finished Pearl.

In 1904 Professor Carleton Brown wrote his epoch-making article "The Author of the Pearl Considered in the Light of his Theological Opinions,"³⁸ where for the first time the actual contents of the poem are taken seriously enough to allow an investigation of its very center, the theological discussion, no longer regarded a mere digression. Professor Brown tries to prove that the poet was an ecclesiastic, as he seems particularly well acquainted with the Bible and the theological controversies of his time. He shows in detail that the poet of the Pearl agrees with his contemporary, Thomas Bradwardine, in his fundamental doctrine, directed against the Pelagianism then current, that "salvation is bestowed through the free grace of God, instead of being achieved by any merits." But even further, the author of the Pearl "goes beyond Bradwardine in the boldness with which he pushes the doctrine of free grace to its logical conclusion." The assertion that the baptized infant will receive equal reward with the adult is directly opposed to the established opinions of the theologians. The author of the Pearl defends the complete equality of the heavenly rewards, a heresy descended from the fourth-century heretic Jovinian. Like Jovinian the poet uses in support of his doctrine the parable of the Vineyard, which he explains literally, implicitly rejecting the scholastic interpretations which tried to smooth over the difficulty. "On the whole, it is evident that our author's attitude towards religious matters was evangelical rather than ecclesiastical." His silence on Holy Church, the absence of any references to apocryphal and legendary matter, his disregard of patristic and scholastic authority, his deep ethical fervor and his assertion of a true equality of the elect are quoted in support of this striking thesis. Professor Brown goes even so far to see, at least in this last respect, a "most interesting and remarkable anticipation of sixteenth century Protestantism."³⁹

In the same periodical and in the same year Professor W. H. Schofield published an article on "The Nature and Fabric of the Pearl,"⁴⁰ which makes a frontal attack on the older interpretation of the Pearl as an elegy and tries, besides, to give an allegorical interpretation of the whole poem. He first shows how flimsy is the evidence for the elegiac interpretation and examines further Brown's theory that our author was an ecclesiastic. "An English ecclesiastic in the fourteenth century could not possibly have had any but an illegitimate child and it stands to reason that a priest would not deliberately go out of his way to call people's attention to his child of shame, and then without apology proceed to exalt above all else purity of life." But the poem does not necessitate such a hypothesis, as it is nothing more than an "artistic arrangement of a situation by which certain theological and religious opinions could be effectively presented." The child in the poem is not the daughter of the poet: no kinship is asserted to exist between the two. "One cannot even affirm that it is an imaginary vision of a father without going beyond the information in the text." The Pearl is, in truth, merely an allegorical figure, a being purely and simply of the poet's imagination. The child never had any physical shape on earth. It was the form of a maiden unknown to him, except in his dream, that the poet bodied forth to our view. His poem is no elegy, no lament, no dirge, no In Memoriam. What is then the meaning of the allegory? Schofield answers that the vision of the Pearl is intended above all to exalt the purity of the maiden, clean virginity. She is merely a symbol of pure maidenhood, a representative bride of the Lamb. However, Schofield's belief in such a one-to-one relation between allegory and its meaning is a little wavering and he quotes the Chaucerian "Testament of Love"⁴¹ to show that the Pearl was a symbol of various connotations. His conclusion is that the Pearl is a purely allegorical figure, similar to those damsels representing Philosophy or Nature or Reason in medieval visions. The poem merely combines the traditional vision of the other world with an equally traditional debate. He asks also, how is it possible that the girl in the vision does not demean herself as a babe of two years and how we can explain "her absolute lack of tenderness in her treatment of her father, her coldly stern rebukes, her never-changing austerity."⁴² "Plainly, viewed as an elegy, the poem is ineffective. Unlike the Lady in Cornus, unlike the Beatrice of Dante, his Pearl, so far as human knowledge can attest, has no stimulating suggestion from a real presence."⁴³

In the appendix of his paper, Professor Schofield communicates the interesting discovery of a close parallel to the Pearl in Boccaccio's earlier eclogue Olympia. Schofield recognizes Boccaccio's eclogue as the starting-point of our author's conception, but, though he does not express any doubt about the elegiac character of Boccaccio's poem written for his daughter Violante, he oddly enough considers this rather a confirmation of his theory. "The Eclogue not only explains the presence of the would-be elegiac atmosphere of the Pearl, but accounts also for its unreality." "If as some might possibly argue, the author of the Pearl had suffered a loss like Boccaccio's and was led to imitate his poem on that account, he would surely have substituted some of his own for Boccaccio's personal touches. As a matter of fact, however, there is no single remark in the Pearl, that by any chance could be autobiographical which is not explicable as an echo of Boccaccio's plainly stated experience."

C. Brown's and Schofield's revolutionary opinions were, however, not accepted by most other scholars, though they forced them to consider the allegorical and theological contents of the poem, which had been hitherto neglected. Professor Ch. G. Osgood's edition of 1906 gives a most thorough consideration to these problems, quoting a great deal of new illustrative material, while still holding firmly to the elegiac interpretation. "The poem," he decides, "is first of all an elegy."⁴⁴ Professor Osgood is not convinced that the poet is an ecclesiastic, as he may well have been a lay-poet with strong religious interests. The dilemma concerning the illegitimate child is not a real one, as he might very well have been married before taking orders. Several references in the poem exclude a purely allegorical interpretation, nor is the identification of the Pearl with maidenhood very convincing, as the Pearl had dozens of meanings; and, besides, the interpretation given by Schofield is nowhere given or even suggested by the poet.⁴⁵ "Considering the poet's work as a whole, it is clear that he is not only no allegorist, but he rather tends to avoid symbolism, even when it lies in his way." Professor Osgood grants, that, though the Pearl is not primarily an allegory, it contains certain allegorical elements. But, on the whole, the poet had no preference for allegory and only now and then imparts a certain allegorical cast to his work. The symbolism is merely latent and any such emblematic result was perhaps reached unconsciously, or at any rate did not constitute an important part of the poet's original design.⁴⁶ In addition to the allegorical elements Osgood recognizes also the popular medieval theme of the vision of an other world in the Pearl. As to the theology propounded, Professor Osgood accepts Brown's conclusion, though he stresses the point that the Jovinian doctrine is only one detail of heresy in a man who, in all other known aspects, was enthusiastically and loyally orthodox. The belief in the equality of heavenly rewards is certainly at variance with the poet's social ideas.⁴⁷ It seems, furthermore, to have been of acquisition more recent than the composition of Purity, for the orthodox view is there clearly implied.⁴⁸ Now this is rather a further indication of the elegiac character of the poem. An isolated point of heresy seems naturally not to have been achieved by reason, but is the reflex of violent emotional experience, the consequence of the poet's affliction by the loss of his daughter. The parallel with Olympia Professor Osgood regards rather as based in the general method of treating an elegiac theme, and perhaps in the actual choice of theme, than in the appropriation of poetic details from the eclogue.

Even more thorough is the rejection of Professor Schofield's hypothesis in other papers published in the following years. C. G. Coulton, the author of a tasteful translation of the Pearl, wrote in its defense.⁴⁹ Coulton shows that the supposition that an ecclesiastic could have had only an illegitimate child is not even well founded because he might have married before taking orders and also because lower orders did not prevent matrimony at that time. Coulton also combats with many telling sarcastic questions Schofield's interpretation of the symbolism of the Pearl as denoting maidenhood and notes judiciously that the comparison with Boccaccio's Olympia speaks rather against Schofield's thesis than for it.

Similar views are upheld by Professor Clark S. Northrup,⁵⁰ who points the way out of the unreal dilemma between elegy and allegory. "That the framework of the poem is that of a vision and that the debate effectively expounds and defends the equality of heavenly rewards, no one will doubt; but that this excludes the possibility that the poem is based on a personal experience is still, we think, an open question." The use of the conventional vision is no more strange than "Boccaccio's use of the eclogue in writing of his five-year-old daughter Violante, or Milton's use of conventional pastoral figure in writing of Edward King. Both Boccaccio and Milton managed to express genuine feeling; so, to our thinking, did the author of the Pearl." Also Gollancz repeated his earlier opinions, embellishing them with even more fantastic speculations such as the curious suggestion that the Pearl was "perhaps a love-child, hence his Privy pearl."⁵¹ More judiciously he states against the allegorical interpretation: "The attempt to read the poem as a theological pamphlet, and as a mere symbolical allegory, ignores its transcendent reality as a poet's lament. The personal side of the poem is clearly marked, though the author nowhere directly refers to his fatherhood … the jeweler indicates clearly enough the reality of his loss."⁵²

No wonder that Professor Schofield wanted to reassert and to explain his theory, when he saw its ill success. The Paper "Symbolism, Allegory and Autobiography in the Pearl"⁵³ is a labored, almost line-by-line interpretation of the poem in the light of Professor Schofield's theory. He shows well enough that the opening stanza has been hitherto thoroughly misinterpreted, that it contains no mention whatsoever of the maiden and that its style rather resembles that of contemporary lapidaries. But later on his effort to deny all personal references becomes very strained, although he avoids the simplified interpretation of his earlier paper and states now rather surprisingly that the final and chief teaching of the work lies in the line saying that those who dwell with Christ in heavenly joy are pearls, spotless in his sight.⁵⁴ Professor Schofield seems right in asserting against Osgood that the allegorical cast of the poem does not appear now and then, but pervasively, wherever it could appear, from the beginning to the end of the work. The emblematic result is an absolutely fundamental part of the poet's design and not an accidental superaddition as Osgood would have us believe. "Take this away and the structure of the poem falls to pieces. On the other hand, take away the would-be 'personal references' and their absence is hardly noticeable."⁵⁵

While Schofield's handling of the symbolism is a little embarrassed and undecided, and, in the second paper at least, fairly non-committal, the allegory of the Pearl found bolder interpreters later, who build on Schofield while they reject his detailed application. Professor R. M. Garrett is the author of a little pamphlet: "The Pearl: an Interpretation,"⁵⁶ where he claims to have found the sesame. The Pearl, according to Garrett, means nothing but the Eucharist. "I have an idea that the whole poem arose from gazing at the Elevated Host in the hands of the Priest." "I believe the poet conceived the poem as taking place within the church, where the Pearl might be buried, quite regardless of the convention of the arbor and the grass." He suggests that the reference to the smell of flowers on the grave-mound is only a quasi-pastoral device, which really hints at the incense in the church. He recapitulates: "Within the frame of the great Pearl the poet see his lost pearl in the presence of the Lamb of God, a very member incorporate in the mystical body of Christ: and she teaches him that through the grace of God as granted in the Eucharist it is given to him to become a member of this body, thus to be forever united with his Pearl as parts of the great Pearl, the mystical body of Christ."⁵⁷ However, the only instance of a parallelism between the Pearl and the Eucharist, which Professor Garrett was able to find in the writings of the Western church, is from an obscure hymn by Venantius Fortunatus. The verses in which the poet refers to the Eucharist⁵⁸ do not have the meaning which Professor Garrett's curious mistranslation suggests.⁵⁹ The whole is merely a string of more or less interesting quotations; the main thesis, however, must be pronounced as unproven.

Professor Jefferson B. Fletcher's comparatively short paper "The Allegory of the Pearl"⁶⁰ strikes us as the sanest and most convincing solution of the main questions, and it is a pity that his suggestions have not become the common property of scholarship. First, Professor Fletcher shows that Carleton Brown's interpretation of the theology of the poem is wrong in the essential points: the Pearl poet does not actually assert "a flat democracy, or rather oriental despotism of an absolute royal family ruling a dead level of subjects," but he recognizes rank in heaven when he mentions the "aldermen right before God's chair."⁶¹ "The presumption is against a devout fourteenth century Catholic acting the heretic; and if he were to do so, he would certainly try to bolster up his position as strongly as possible." Professor Fletcher shows also that according to the teachings of the Church it is entirely possible to reconcile the equality of the heavenly rewards expressed by the denarius with the subjective variety of the enjoyment of this beatitude. Also the dilemma between Pearl as an elegy or an allegory is justly exposed as a false one. It is possible to grant all the allegorical interpretations which the critics have proposed, and still "believe in the historical existence of the child, just as, for instance, Albertus Magnus in his praise of the Virgin Mary described all the symbolic properties, delights, scents, meteorolog, flora and fauna of Mary quâ Garden without ever doubting her historical reality." Also the symbolism of the Pearl cannot be interpreted mechanically by one correspondent abstract as maidenhood. "Though each fact may reflect but one object, the symbol as a whole may at the time reflect many objects."

Sister M. Madeleva has devoted a whole book to a new allegorical interpretation. The subtitle of her book Pearl: A Study in Spiritual Dryness⁶² indicates the surprising conclusion that the poem is a "purely subjective study in spiritual dryness, interior desolation, a lament for the loss of the sensible sweetness of God."⁶³ The poem "opens with a real case of spiritual 'blues,' followed by a consideration of God's grace, brought to a perfectly consistent climax, the contemplation of heaven."⁶⁴ "As to wife, and child, and bereavement, I say that there was no wife, there was no two-year-old daughter and consequently no bereavement."⁶⁵ The spot where the poet mourned his pearl is expressedly not a graveyard, but a typical monastery garden.⁶⁶ The child could have never been taken into the procession following the Lamb, a child could never have talked in the way the visionary figure is speaking. The Pearl child rather represents "the poet's own soul, as it might be in a state of perfection at this particular time of life."⁶⁷ "The Pearl is a token, a symbol of peace; the poet is not seeking a child but a state, a condition of peace, symbolized by a pearl."⁶⁸ All this is illustrated or rather darkened by plentiful quotations from medieval literature on mysticism, on spiritual dryness in general, etc., but the actual argument is quite amateurish and frequently enough flies directly into the face of all evidence of the text.

Another revival of the purely allegorical interpretation is represented by Walter Kirkland Greene's article: "The Pearl—A New Interpretation."⁶⁹ Like Schofield he asserts that the poem is not autobiographical, but parabolical. It does not refer to the actual loss of a child, but the discussion between the dreamer and the maiden is a literary device for imparting a spiritual teaching. The dreamer's function consists solely in introducing the maiden and allowing her to utter her revelations in regard to divine grace and the heavenly rewards. Greene draws a close parallel to Boccaccio's Olympia and makes an unconvincing attempt to establish a parallel with Dante's Purgatorio.⁷⁰ Greene seems to be still convinced of the justness of Professor Brown's description of the poet's heretical theological opinions, but objects to Schofield's interpretation of the Pearl as a symbol of maidenhood as this would not explain the poet's real or apparent grief and subsequent joy. But the way out found by Greene, that the figure of the child is used merely as a literary device to impart the spiritual lesson of divine grace, is surely a blind alley, even though the article has its merit in insisting on the problem of divine grace as the central theological question of the poem.

Finally, an important parallel was first quoted by Miss Elizabeth Hart in her article "The heaven of Virgins."⁷¹ She disproves Sister M. Madeleva's argument that a two-year-old child could not be among the procession of the hundred and forty thousand by pointing to a passage in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale⁷² and drawing attention to the liturgical use of the passage describing the procession in the Apocalypse in the Mass read on the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Curiously enough, Miss Hart has no quarrel with Sister madeleva's main thesis.

It remains for us to reintegrate these interpretations which have passed before our mental eye in a chronological order into one consistent picture which will use the results gained by the study of the literature and will add a few new points of view and illustrations of our own.

The study of the literature showed that several questions about the Pearl are still undecided. First of all, we have the dilemma between the elegiacal interpretation and the allegorical interpretation; secondly, there is the moot question about the theological contents of the Pearl's instruction; and thirdly, there is the question about the actual meaning of the symbolism of the Pearl.

The debate which is pervading all literature on the Pearl, a debate between elegy and allegory, is very poorly formulated at the outset. There cannot be any doubt that the poem is not an elegy in any sense of the word. The mourning of a beloved object which might conceivably be termed elegiac is merely the starting-point of the poem, which obviously is mainly a vision bringing consolation to the mourner. The point of issue should be rather expressed by a dilemma between a personal interpretation and a purely allegorical one. Professor Fletcher has shown very convincingly that even this dilemma is a false one. We can very well grant the reality of the loss of the child and its historical existence, while we are under no necessity whatever to deny the allegorical intent of the whole. However, it is clear that Ten Brink's, Gollancz's and Osgood's interpretations of the personal background go a good deal beyond the real evidence. We do not know anything about the child mourned, except the fact that it died at two years of age. We do not even know that she was the poet's daughter, though this interpretation is plausible enough. The only definition of the relationship—and its particular form might have been necessitated by the exigencies of rhyme—can be found in line 233 and asserts merely:

Ho watƷ me nerre þen aunte or nece,

so that the possibility of a young sister is left open. We know nothing whatsoever about the child's name—there is no need to see an allusion to Margarete or Margery in the pervading symbolism of the Pearl. Nor do we know anything at all about the mother, who is never mentioned by the poet. Death in child-birth, unfaithfulness, or the illegitimacy of the relation cannot be deduced from the single passage which says:

Art þou my perle þat I haf playned
Regretted by myn one, on nyƷte,⁷³

which means nothing else than that the poet has mourned her in the loneliness of the night. Gollancz derives from these lines even the notion that the child was an only child and interprets the adjective "privy" applied to the "pearl withouten spot" as an allusion to the supposed illegitimacy of the child.⁷⁴

But however sharply we may reject the fanciful speculations of some interpreters, we should not be blind, as others have been, to the essential truth of the personal interpretation. There cannot be any doubt that the poet is mourning the actual loss of a little child, who was not yet two years old when she died, so young and tender of age that she could not please God by good works nor pray to him, as she knew neither Pater nor Creed.⁷⁵ All purely allegorical interpretations break down completely at these passages. Nor can there be any doubt that the poet has fallen asleep on her grave, clearly pictured in the illustration to lines 57-64 and not in a monastery garden (Madeleva) or in a church (Garrett). The frequently repeated arguments of all allegorists that the child's behavior to the father is unchildlike is perfectly invalid as the whole supposition on which the poem proceeds is precisely a transformation of the two-year-old child into a wise, majestic inhabitant of the heavens, free from all earthly ignorance and affections. She, who was once so young and simple,⁷⁶ is now keen of wit and thoroughly knowing. This is entirely in accordance with the teaching of the church, for which the conferment of heavenly grace always meant a complete regeneration, a becoming similar to God, a state which implies heavenly beauty, heavenly wisdom and joyous freedom from earthly passions like envy, etc.⁷⁷ Besides, this transfiguration is nothing unusual in medieval literature: the Olympia of Boccaccio's Eclogue is similarly remote from Boccaccio's six-year-old daughter Violante, and the Beatrice of Dante's Paradise talks very differently from the earthly daughter of Folco Portinari.

Also the argument of those allegorists who grant these personal allusions, but explain them merely as a literary device for imparting a spiritual teaching is not convincing. It is, of course, true that the elegiacal purpose, the mourning of the child, is not the real purpose of the poem, as this is rather contained in the lesson which the beatified child is giving to the poet. The purely elegiac interpretation makes the poem an unartistic conglomerate, as it degrades the very center, the debate between the poet and the visionary girl, to a mere digression detrimental to its artistic unity. Nevertheless it is untrue to say that the personal loss clearly expressed in the poem is a mere device, a mere vehicle destined to convey the revelations in regard to divine grace and the heavenly rewards. All these lessons would, after all, scarcely interest the poet unless they would administer personal consolation and reassurement. The point of the poem is the conviction, which the poet carries away at the end of the poem, that the child is saved and that she even sees the face of God. In order to be convinced, the poet must entertain certain theological opinions which cannot therefore be considered in irrelevant digression. That these opinions are expanded by the figure of the girl should not blind us to the fact that they are the real opinions of the author, while the opinions put into the mouth of the dreaming poet are the opinions he is discarding—which he has overcome by the certainty of hope. The logical sequence of events is this: the death of the child, a period of doubt and despair, conviction arrived at by theological study or even confirmed by an actual dream that the child is saved, and lastly the composition of the poem, which embodies this spiritual progress. The essential contrast is that between the wretched will of the fretting mourner, his "del and gret daunger," the "strot" of his rebellious heart⁷⁸ and the joyful resignation of the verse towards the end of the poem:

Now al be to þat PrynceƷ paye.79

We may therefore very well call the dream and the vision a literary device—there is scarcely anybody who would imagine that it could have happened in this form—but we cannot call the existence of the child and the actuality of its loss a device, as without the reality of the loss the whole vision would manifestly lose any personal appeal to the poet and one could justly be astonished that the poet was at all interested in hearing that a two-year-old child can be saved and even incorporated among the followers of the Lamb. It is irrelevant whether the poet ever really dreamt such a dream: we shall never know it and if we knew that he did, we should still have to say that the poem is necessarily an elaboration, a concretization of a dream-reality and therefore more real and lasting than any dream could ever have been. Vision and theological lesson are closely intertwined: as a matter of fact the argument of the girl is nothing but a justification of the vision. The theological instruction is a ratiocination, which tries to defend the justness, possibility and likelihood of the vision, and on the other hand, the vision is also a device to give authority and weight to the theological opinions revealed by the girl. If we consider the question of the type or "genre" of the poem as at all important, we have to answer that the poem is a vision of the other world, in which the poet is administering consolation to himself for a personal loss. Inside of this vision we have a debate between the dreaming poet and the girl. In addition, the whole is permeated by the allegory of the Pearl.

The vision asserts that it is possible for a baptized child, who died before it was two years old and therefore had no opportunity to perform good works or to exercise Christian faith, to be saved and even to be received among the host which follows the Lamb of God. The debate merely reinforces the vision by arguments. Professor Brown has doubted the orthodoxy of this view advanced by the poet and has even made him out a sort of precursor of the Reformation. He quotes Bradwardine's testimony⁸⁰ to the fact that Pelagianism was widely accepted in fourteenth-century England. On grounds of Pelagianism, which, however, scarcely was ever held in this extreme form, there would be no possibility for a small child to acquire heavenly grace, as grace is entirely dependent on good works. But our author's rejection of this view is by no means heterodox. On the contrary, it is in perfect accordance with the views of the church, even though at the time of our poet doubt was still possible.

Let us examine the opinions of the church fathers on this point. The most important authority is, of course, St. Augustine, as he especially fought Pelagius in numerous writings and is very explicit on our question, as the grace of baptized children was a chief argument against Pelagius' exclusive stress on good works. The fundamental assumption is that God could not condemn an innocent, baptized child, as "all the ways of the Lord are mercy and truth."⁸¹ The question is, rather, by what right a child, though devoid of any merits which it could not possibly earn, can nevertheless be granted eternal beatitude. The possibility is opened by a distinction between two titles to salvation: one the hereditary title which we have as God's children, the other the title by reward as God's laborers. The children have therefore a title to salvation merely as "filii Dei," which is a "titulus haereditatis," while grown-up persons either lose their title to grace, conferred by baptism, by committing sins or add to their title by good works (titulus mercedis). This means actually that there are two kinds of grace, which modern theology has come to distinguish as "gratia prima" and "gratia secunda." "Gratia prima" is completely free grace, "gratis data, donata, non reddita,"⁸² while the second grace is additional and proportional to our merits. This first grace is given by God as the remittance of original sin in baptism. All the church fathers insist that the innocent children also have inherited the sin of Adam and that they would be condemned to eternal damnation if the death of Christ did not save them in baptism.⁸³ In baptism, says Augustine, "parvulis infundi occultissimam gratiam per quam ad Deum convertuntur."⁸⁴ The efficacy of baptism is so great that it gives them also a consciousness of the grace received⁸⁵ and a belief in the Son of Man. "Inter credentes igitur baptizatos parvulos numerabis, nec juidicare nullo modo aliter audebis, si non vis esse apertus hereticus. Ergo ideo habent vitam aeternam, quia qui credit in filium, habet vitam aeternam."⁸⁶ Exactly the same opinion is also held by St. Chrysostomus and other fathers of the church,⁸⁷ but apparently in the course of the Middle Ages the salvation of baptized children does not seem to have been received quite without question, though the prevalent view held to the kindly theory of the fathers. This development can be illustrated by the difference between two Popes. Pope Innocent III (1198 till 1216) simply thought that there are two opinions about the question, but does not decide in favor of either: "Aliis asserentibus pervirtutem baptismi parvulis quidem culpam remitti, sed gratiam non conferri; nonnullis vero dicentibus ed elimitti peccatum et virtutes infundi habentibus illas quoad habitum non quoad usum,"⁸⁸ that is, the child is not getting any assistance for his for his actions, but a form of being, a state of existence. But already Pope Clement V (1305-1314) considers the majority of opinions as inclining toward the second view favorable to the salvation of children. He declared at the council held at Vienne in 1311: "Quantum ad effectum baptismi in parvulis reperiuntur doctores quidam theologi opiniones contrarias habuisse, quibusdam ex ipsis dicentibus, per virtutem baptismi parvulis quidem culpam remitti, sed gratiam non conferri: aliis e contra asserentibus quod et culpa eisdem in baptismo remittitur et virtutes ac informans gratia infunduntur quoad habitum, etsi non pro illotempore quoad usum. Nos attendentes generalem efficaciam mortis Christi, quae per baptisma applicatur pariter omnibus baptizatis, opinionem seeundam tamquam probaliorem et dictis sanctorum et modernorum theologorum magis consonam et conformem sacro approbante Concilio duximus eligendam."⁸⁹ Also St. Bernhard of Clairvaux defends the salvation of children and considers envy to be the cause of the doubts expressed against this view.⁹⁰ In the sixteenth century the Council of Trent codified this doctrine in so many words,⁹¹ and also the founders of Jesuit neo-scholasticism of that time all accept the view expressed by Pope Clement V, e.g., Canisius, Vasquez and Suarez.⁹² The quotations and references may be sufficient to show that our poet was completely in the line of orthodox teaching and that he lived at a time when doubt seemed still to be possible about this question. But a famous Pope decided in agreement with our poet and the ultimate decision of the Catholic Church lay with him. It is essentially a Christian doctrine to put such efficacy into the act of baptism. It not only remits original sin, but also infuses sanctifying grace. The point of view expressed in the Pearl is therefore precisely un-Protestant, as in the theory of sixteenth-century Protestantism, the justification of children by baptism remained unexplained. This is the reason why radical Protestant sects like the Anabaptists and the Menonites denied the possibility of efficient infant baptism. In this point certainly our poet is not a forerunner of Protestantism. He is absolutely at one with the opinions we have here expounded: he considers grace completely free, merely depending on God's liberality, it is the "heritage"⁹³ with which the bride is decorated. Baptism washes away the guilt of Adam:

Þat wascheƷ away þe gylteƷ felle
Þat Adam wyth in deth vus drounde.
Now is þer noƷt in þe worlde rounde
By-twene vus & blysse …⁹⁴

The fact that the child did not know Pater or Creed is irrelevant, for the "grace of God is gret in-nogh."⁹⁵

A question apart from the assertion of the possibility of salvation for the child is raised by her status in heaven. That she can be saved we have shown to be clearly orthodox, but there has been expressed doubt whether it is possible that she could be received among the followers of the Lamb. Professor Brown even suspected the poet of teaching a complete equality of heavenly rewards, in anticipation of Luther's famous sermon "De nativitate Mariae," where he says: "omnes Christiani aeque magni sumus, sicut mater Dei, et aeque sancii sicut ipsa." Our poet has been connected by Professor Brown with the Jovinian heresy asserting the same. It is not surprising that Professor Brown "had been unable to find a single orthodox theologian or poet, from the time of Jerome until the appearance of the Pearl, who asserts the equality of heavenly rewards."⁹⁶ We actually have in the poem passages which seem to assert that the poet is holding this view in order to promote the child, most clearly e.g. in the verses:

"Of more & lasse in GodeƷ ryche,"
Þat gentyl sayde, "lys no joparde,
For þer is vch mon payed inlyche,
Wheþer lyttel oþer much be hys rewarde."⁹⁷

But with such an interpretation many other passages are in conflict, which implicitly recognize the established teaching of the church. The very idea that the girl is in the procession following the Lamb implies a distinction in heaven, and, even though the heavenly hierarchy is nowhere enumerated, the fact of its existence is clearly in the mind of our poet throughout the vision. He speaks not only of the hundred and forty-four thousand virgins of the procession, but also of the four beasts and especially of the "aldermen so sadde of chere" "ryƷt byfore GodeƷ chayere."⁹⁸ The aldermen occur once more coupled with "legyounes of aungeleƷ"⁹⁹ who cannot be imagined to be identical with the virgins in whose procession the girl is walking.

It is also not true that the poet would deny the importance of good works altogether. He says the opposite twice:

Þe ryƷt-wys man schal se hys face

and

Þe ryƷt-wys man also sertayn
Aproche he schal þat proper pyle.¹⁰⁰

Though the poet is no doubt not very definite about the hierarchy in heaven and though he makes no attempt to reconcile the assumption of the traditional distinctions with his assertion of the equality of the heavenly rewards, we must assume that he did not feel this contradiction and that he felt no qualms about the orthodoxy of his opinion. Actually his ideas are absolutely orthodox, only that the church felt more clearly the necessity of reconciling the parable of the vineyard and the denarius given to every laborer with the generally accepted ideas about a heavenly hierarchy. In our poet we have the parable stated and the traditional picture of heaven accepted side by side without a sense of contradiction. The church is merely conscious of the difficulty and solves it in a way satisfactory to religious thought. All the church fathers assert the inequality of the heavenly rewards, while dwelling on the perfect harmony and lack of envy in heaven. According to St. Augustine there is the same difference between the just as between the sinners.¹⁰¹ As biblical support the passage about the many mansions in the house of the father¹⁰² and the passage in the Corinthians which asserts that one star differs from the other in brightness¹⁰³ are constantly quoted. The Parable of the Vineyard is interpreted in such a way that the contradiction is solved rathe ingeniously. John Chrysostomus, archbishop of Constatinople,¹⁰⁴ solves the question by suggesting that those who have come earlier in the parable of the vineyard were after all subject to the low passion of envy and jealousy in claiming a higher payment. The actual purpose of the parable is merely to give courage to those who became converted only in later years and to convince them that they are not worse off than others. St. Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, does not seem to see the contradiction between the parable and the teaching about the inequality of heavenly rewards. Once¹⁰⁵ he elaborates the differences between those who are going to dwell in the heavens, those who will enjoy the joys of Paradise, and others who will own the splendid city. When he is explaining the parable of the vineyard,¹⁰⁶ he simply says that it means the same master of the house: some he has called immediately at the creation of the world, others in the middle of time and still others when the time had progressed and others again, when it was at an end, for there are many laborers, each one at his time, but only one father of the house, who calls them to work. There is only one vineyard, there is only one major domus, the Spirit of God, who arranges everything, and similarly only one reward, since all received the denarius with the picture and the inscription of the king, the knowledge of the Son of God, which is immortality. Only St. Augustine saw the difficulty and solved it thus: 'Objectio de denario omnibus reddendo, contra diversitatem praemiorum. Quid sibi ergo vult, inquiunt, ille denarius, qui opera vineae terminato aequaliter omnibus redditur; sive iis qui ex prima hora, sive iis qui una hora operati sunt? Quid utique (Matth. XX, 9) nisi aliquid significat, quod omnes communiter habebunt, sicuti est ipsa vita aeterna, ipsum regnum coelorum, ubi erunt omnes quos Deus praedestinavit, vocavit, justificavit, glorificavit? Oportet enim corruptibile hoc induere incorruptionem, et mortale hoc induere immortalitatem: hic est ille denarius, merces omnium.' Nevertheless it is true: 'Stella tamen ab stella differì in gloria: sic et resurrectio mortuorum: haec sunt merita diversa sanctorum. Ita quia ipsa vita aeterna pariter erit omnibus Sanctis, aequalis denarius omnibus attributus est; quia vero in ipsa vita aeterna distincte fulgebant lumina meritorum, multae mansiones sunt apud Patrem (Joan. XIV, 2): ac per hoc in denario quidem non impari, non vivit alius alio prolixius; in multis autem mansionibus honoratur alius alio clarius.'¹⁰⁷ This theory was restated and simplified by the great codifier of dogma, Gregory the Great: 'Ipse propter electos in Evangelio dicit: In domo patris mei mansiones multae sunt. Si enim dispar retributio in illa aeterna beatitudine non esset una potius mansio quam multae essent. Multae ergo mansiones sunt, in quibus et distincti bonorum ordines, et propter meritorum consortia communiter laetantur; et tarnen unum denarium omnes laborantes accipiunt. Qui multis mansionibus distinguuntur: quia et una est beatitudo quam illic percipiunt, dispar retributionis qualitas, quam per opera diversa consequuntur.'¹⁰⁸ Bonaventura¹⁰⁹ teaches a similar way out, asserting that though all will have the same blessedness, considered objectively, yet there will be a difference in the quantity of joy. The same point of view is succinctly phrased by St. Thomas: 'Unitas denarii significat unitatem beatitudinis ex parte objecti; sed diversitas mansionum significat diversitatem beatitudinis secundum diversum gradum fruitionis.'¹¹⁰ Similar opinions can be found in Petrus Lombardus, Duns Scotus and Prosper.¹¹¹ The author of the Pearl might have been unacquainted with these solutions of the difficulty, since he stresses much more the obvious sense of the Parable without, however, drawing radical consequences which led Jovinian and Luther to quite different solutions. He is content to show that this parable justifies his belief that his child could be beatified, and not only beatified, but, thanks to God's unbounded grace, be received among the very followers of the Lamb.

That this particular elevation is quite possible was shown conclusively by Miss Hart, who drew attention to a passage in Chaucer's Prioress's Tale, where a seven-year-old child is definitely associated with the hundred and forty-four thousand.¹¹² "Chaucer calls the little boy's mother 'his newe Rachel (B 1817), alluding to Matthew 2, 18. This verse is the conclusion of the Gospel read in the Mass on the Feast of the Holy Innocents (Dec. 28); and the Epistle of that Feast is the very passage in which John describes the procession of the virgins. This is the only liturgical use of this particular passage from the Apocalypse and the association of the Holy Innocents with the procession must have been familiar enough in the Middle Ages. The fact that the liturgy describes such small children, 'a bimatu et infra' (Matthew 2, 16), as forming part of the procession of the centum quadraginta quatuor milia—this fact would seem amply to explain the poet's assigning a place therein to a little girl" of two years' age.¹¹³ We may add in support of Miss Hart's thesis that in the All Saints' Day litany, in the third liturgical order the classes of saints are enumerated in the following order: "Maria—Angeli—Patriarchae et Prophetae—Apostoli et Evangelistae—Discipuli Domini— Innocentes—Martyres—Pontifices et Confessores— Doctores—Sacerdotes et Levitae—Monachi et Eremitae— Virgines et Viduae."¹¹⁴ Occam finally gives a theological justification of this special position of the children by drawing a distinction between two kinds of predestination, one which he calls absolute and one which he calls hypothetic. To the hypothetic kind belong all ordinary people, as God has here to decide "post praevisa merita." To the privileged of the first class belong the Virgin Mary, the prophets and apostles, certain saints and all children dying in the grace of baptism.¹¹⁵ The theology of the poem reveals itself then as entirely orthodox, consistent with the best teachings of the church and well informed on almost all points, though, of course, one cannot deny that it is used for purposes of special pleading. The conclusion drawn from this that the poet must have been an ecclesiastic is not entirely convincing, as we can well imagine an educated layman, interested in these things and well read in his Latin, to have acquired sufficient knowledge in these matters, which touched so intimately the fate of a beloved child or sister.

The third question raised by any study of the Pearl is the question of the meaning of its allegory. Here again one must grant to the defenders of the personal interpretation that it would be quite possible to imagine the poem, i.e., the vision and the teaching conveyed by the child without the allegory of the Pearl. It is undoubtedly true that the poem has no allegorical key to it: neither maidenhood (Schofield) nor the Eucharist (Garrett) nor the own soul of the poet (Madeleva) will do. There is no such solution of the allegory. On the other hand, it is true that the allegory of the Pearl is the chief decoration of the poem, one of the main devices of the poet to give it artistic charm and unity. The title Pearl, which modern scholarship has given to the poem, is therefore perfectly justified, as the whole poem from the beginning to the end is playing variations on the theme of the Pearl, even though the actual contents are a vision and a theological debate.

The Pearl represents several different things in the poem: first of all the earthly child that went through the grass to the ground-a use of the word, to which the visionary girl herself objects, as she on earth could be rather compared to a flowering and fading rose.¹¹⁶ Then it means the visionary child in heaven, which at the same time is richly decorated with pearls, especially with one "wonder perle, wythouten wemme" in the midst of her breast, a Pearl which is also worn by all the other virgins in the host following the Lamb.¹¹⁷ This Pearl in the midst of her breast is identical with the Pearl which the merchant in the Parable bought with all his treasures and this is like the realm of heaven's sphere,¹¹⁸ i.e., it is nothing but eternal beatitude. The poet is then counseled by the maiden to forsake the mad world and to purchase this spotless Pearl.¹¹⁹ When he will have purchased this Pearl, he will himself have become a Pearl, a precious pearl unto His pleasure, which is also the final aim and wish of all men on earth.¹²⁰

The symbolism then is not simple and cannot be solved by a one-to-one identification with some abstract virtue, as maidenhood, cleanliness, or by identifying it with the Eucharist or the soul of the poet, but it is complex or rather double. First the Pearl is the girl before she is lost-here obviously Pearl is merely an ordinary symbol for the preciousness, uniqueness, beauty, purity, etc. of the dead girl. When she is found again in heaven, the Pearl is a symbol of an immaculate, pure blessed person in the hands of God. The poet and all men are aspiring to become such a one. Parallel with this symbolism which identifies Pearl with a person, runs the second symbolism, that of the Pearl which the girl is wearing on her breast and which the poet is counseled to purchase for himself. This is obviously the realm of heaven or the grace of God. The symbolism of the Pearl—while not exactly Protean—is shifting subtly, from the conventional and mere earthly meaning of preciousness to the heavenly symbol of grace and the realm of grace. This is really very simple and completely in agreement with traditional symbolism.

All allegorical use of the Pearl descends from the Parable, cited also by our poet, about the merchant who sold all his goods in order to win one precious pearl.¹²¹ This Pearl is most frequently identified with Christ, e.g., as early as in Bishop Melito's Clavis de Metallibus, which is supposed to date back to the second century.¹²² But very frequently indeed it means the blessed, the saints themselves, a symbolism which agrees with what we have considered the first meaning of the Pearl in our poem. We find this interpreatation in Rupert of Deutz, in Hrabanus Maurus, the famous archbishop of Mayence, and in St. Bonaventura. The last says e.g.: "Bonae margaritae sunt omnes sancit; una vero pretiosa est Christus."¹²³ Even more frequent is the identification of the Pearl with the heavenly kingdom and heavenly grace or similar concepts as the word of God, the faith of the church. To Gregory the Great "margarita vero mystice significai evangelicam doctrinam sue dulcetudinem coelestis vitae,"¹²⁴ to Petrus Chrysologus it is identical with "vita aeterna,"¹²⁵ to Petrus Capuanus, a Parisian theologian at the end of the twelfth century, who gives a very elaborate symbolism of the Pearl, it means "Fides ecclesiae," "verbum dei" and the Apostles.¹²⁶ More confused is the symbolism of the Pearl in the "Testament of Love," a prose piece, which was first printed in Thynne's edition of Chaucer in 1532, but was probably written by one Thomas Usk about 1387. The allegory of the Pearl there returns again and again, but always in some connection with grace or mercy. At the end the writer says with extraordinary bluntness: "Margarite, a woman, betokeneth grace, lerning, or wisdom of god, or els holy church."¹²⁷ That this interpretation was a current one can be also shown from a fifteenth-century source, i.e., from Beati Alani (Redivivi Rupensis) Tractatus Mirabilis De Ortu atque Progressu Psalterii Christi et Mariae.¹²⁸ This curious book gives a whole synopsis of fifteen gems explaining or rather running parallel to the "Ave Maria, gratia plena." Gratia in the text of the Annunciation is identified with margarita, a symbol of Grace, while e.g. Ave is identified with Adamas, a symbol of Innocence, etc. The text gives a long and involved explanation, fortified by many authorities, why Mary can be represented by a Pearl, and why and how she is full of grace. Somebody who would make a closer search into allegorical literature might probably discover many more similar passages, which, however shifting the symbolism may seem, are perfectly consistent in the main point. We see the Pearl is even here perfectly well set into the tradition of its time. The difficulties of the poem appear then largely as illusory, as many of them were stirred up by scholarship which lost contact with the actual text and indulged in mysterious interpretations or fanciful speculations.

All these debates, we feel, about dialect, authorship, elegy versus allegory, theology, symbolism, etc., though they have been almost the only occupation of scholarship, say very little about the Pearl as a work of art. We may grant that a right conception of the contents of the poem has cleared the way for an artistic appreciation, but the actual study of the artistic value of the poem is still in its beginnings. Even the obvious approach through questions of meter and structure has not been much utilized hitherto. Professor Northup's paper, "A Study of the Metrical Structure of the Middle English Poem the Pearl"¹²⁹ is rather a contribution to the history of final unstressed -e in the West Midland than a metrical investigation proper. Also Oakden's treatment of the meter is rather a statistical survey of the alliteration and its use¹³⁰ than an attempt at artistic interpretation. In these questions much is still to be done by a judicious use of modern methods, which, on the whole, could come to many new results in Middle English scholarship.¹³¹

Notes

1. London 1839, for the Ballantyne Club, pp. XLVII-L.
2. In "Early English Alliterative Poems in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century." Ed. by R. Morris. London 1864. There are revised editions dating from 1869, 1885, 1896 and 1901.
3. Pearl. An English Poem of the Fourteenth Century. Ed. with a Modern Rendering by I. Gollancz. London 1891.
4. E. Kölbing, Englische Studien XVI. 268-273, a review of Gollancz's edition. The debate R. Morris-Gollancz in the Academy (No. 999, 1001, 1003 and 1005, 39, 602; 40, 36, 76, 116). F. Holthausen, Zur Textkritik me. Dichtungen, in Herrigs Archiv, Vol. XC, p. 144-8.
5. The Pearl. A Middle English Poem. Ed. with Introduction, Notes, and Glossary by Charles Grosvenor Osgood. In the Belles Lettres Series. Boston 1906.
6. Pearl. An English Poem of the Fourteenth Century. Edited with Modern Rendering, together with Boccaccio's Olympia, by Sir Israel Gollancz. London 1921, in the Medieval Library. Gollancz's edition of the Pearl in "Select Early English Poems" (Milford, Oxford University Press) is only a large paper edition of the same.
7. Cp. Gollancz's introduction p. L. But dozens of Gollancz's changes compared to the 1891 edition follow simply Osgood.
8. Cp. e. g. J. R. Hulbert's review in Modern Philology. Vol. XXV. (1927), p. 118-9.
9. Mittelenglische Sprach- und Literaturproben. Berlin 1917, pp. 114-4, an edition of ll. 1-360.
10. In Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose (Oxford 1925, p. 59), a well annotated edition of lines 361-612 (p. 59 seq.).
11. In Modern Philology VI (1908), 197 seq. on ll. 215/ 6.
12. Some Notes on the Pearl, PMLA March 1922. Vol. XXXVII, pp. 52-93, and More Notes on Pearl. PMLA. Dec. 1927. Vol. XLII, pp. 807-31.
13. Notes on the Pearl. MLR (1920). Vol. XV, pp. 298-300.
14. Early English Text Society. Vol. 162, 176 plates, compare the review by W. W. Greg in the MLR. Vol. 19, p. 223.
15. Alliterative Poetry in Middle English. The Dialectical and Metrical Survey. Manchester University Press. 1930, p. 262 seq.
16. Gollancz in his editions in rhymeless verses. A. R. Brown in Poet Lore V, 434-6, rendering of ll. 158-172. F. T. Palgrave, Landscape in Poetry. London 1897, pp. 115-7, rendering of st. 4 in metre. S. Weir Mitchell, Pearl, rendered into Modern English Verse, New York 1906. 46 stanzas mostly from the first half, also Portland, Maine, 1908, in the "Bibelot." C. G. Coulton, Pearl rendered into Modern English, London 1906 in the metre of the original (also 1921). Charles G. Osgood, The Pearl rendered in Prose. Princeton 1907. Two poor translations by Sophie Jewett (New York 1908) and Marian Mead (Portland, Maine 1908). Jessie Weston in "Romance, Vision and Satire" (London 1912). W. A. Neilson and K. G. T. Webster in Chief British Poets of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, London 1916, a prose-translation by Professor Webster. The German translation by Otto Decker, Schwerin 1916, the Italian by Frederico Olivero (Milano e Turino 1927), with a good introduction.
17. J. P. Gilson: The Library of the Henry Savile of Banke. A paper read before the Bibliographical Society Nov. 18, 1907, London 1909, proves that the MS comes from this library (1568-1617, Banke in Yorkshire).
18. Morris, introduction to his edition, F. Knigge, Die Sprache des Dichters von Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, der sogenannten Early English Alliterative Poems and De Erkenwalde. Marburg 1885. W. Fick, Zum mittelenglischen Gedicht von der Perle. Eine Lautuntersuchung. Kiel 1885. Schwahn, Die Conjugation in Sir Gawayn and the Green Knight und den sogenannten Early English Alliterative Poems. Strassburg 1884.
19. "The 'West Midland' of the Romances" in Modern Philology XIX. 1921-2, p. 9 and p. 11.
20. Ibidem p. 16.
21. Ib. p. 12.
22. Historische Grammatik der Englischen Sprache. Leipzig 1921. Vol. I. I, 47.
23. Ib. § 33, § 357, Anm. 1; § 397, Anm. I; § 399, Anm. 1; § 408, Anm. 3; § 460, Anm. 1.
24. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the West Midland" in PMLA, Vol. XXXVII (1922), p. 503, especially p. 505 and 519.
25. Loc. cit. p. 85-6.
26. Ib. p. 257 seq. compare A. Brandl's unfavorable review in Herrigs Archiv. Vol. 86 (158) 1931, p. 293. "Die grosse Dialektkarte ist nicht ernsthaft zu nehmen" etc.
27. In "The Dialects of the West Midlands" in "Review of English Studies." Vol. 3 (1927), p. 327 seq.
28. Cp. on this R. Huchon's "Histoire de la langue anglaise," Vol. II, 235 who studies the vocabulary and comes to the conclusion: "II tend à se constituer ainsi une langue littéraire spéciale, qui se superpose à l'idiome courant, le dépasse et diffère de lui par la tonalité et par l'orgine des matériaux employés." Also H. L. Savage's opinion (ed. of St. Erkenwald, p. XXXIII).
29. The best summary for the evidence of common authorship of these poems in Prof. Menner's edition of Purity (Yale University Press. 1920). Additional points in Oakden loc. cit. p. 251 seq. On the sources of Gawain cp. G. L. Kittredge: A. Study of Gawain and the Green Knight. Cambridge, Mass. 1916. The idea of a French source for Sir Gawain has been contested by E. v. Schaubert, Der englische Ursprung von Sir Gawain in "Englische Studien," Vol. 57, pp. 330-446. If her thesis should be accepted, the common authorship of Gawain and Pearl would become rather doubtful.
30. St. Erkenwald, Yale Press, 1926, p. XLVIII seq. cp. C. Horstmann, "Altenglische Legenden" (Neue Folge), Heilbronn 1881, p. 266.
31. The Huchown theory was advocated mainly by George Neilson e. g. in "Huchown of the Awle Ryale, the Alliterative Poet" (Glasgow 1902), or "Cross-links between Pearl and the Adventures of Arthur" in "Scottish Antiquary" 16, p. 67-78. Already M. Trautmann destroyed the theory in "Der Dichter Huchown und seine Werke," Anglia I, 190-49. Best discussion by H. N. McCracken "Concerning Huchown" PMLA. Vol. XXV (1910, p. 507 seq.).
32. The Strode theory advanced by Gollancz in his editions (p. XLVI of the 1921 ed.), in the DNB under Strode and the CHEL I (1901) p. 320 seq. Carleton Brown (The Author of the Pearl Considered in the Light of his Theological Opinions in PMLA. Vol. XXIX, pp. 146-8) destroys the theory completely.
33. PMLA. Vol. XLIII (March 1928), p. 177-9.
34. E. g. Jusserand, Legouis, Wülker, H. Hecht, Snell, Saintsbury, V. Mathesius etc.
35. Quoted according to "Geschichte der englischen Literature." 2nd ed. Strassburg 1899, p. 406-7.
36. 1921 ed., p. XLIII.
37. Ib. p. XLIV.
38. PMLA. Vol. XIX (1904), pp. 115-153.
39. Ib. p. 145.
40. PMLA. Vol. XIX (1904), pp. 154-215.
41. Cp. below p. 27.
42. Loc. cit. p. 201.
43. Ib. p. 202.
44. Osgood's ed. p. XXVIII.
45. Ib. p. XXXIV.
46. Ib. p. XXXVI.
47. Osgood points to ll. 35-50 of "Purity."
48. "Purity," ll. 13-124.
49. "In Defence of the Pearl," in "Modern Language Review." Vol. II (1907), p. 39.
50. "Recent Studies of the Pearl" in "Modern Language Notes." Vol. XXII (1907), p. 21.
51. Cambridge History of English Literature I, 331.
52. Ib. p. 320.
53. PMLA . Vol. XXIV (1909), pp. 585-675.
54. Ib. p . 618.
55. Ib. p . 631.
56. University of Washington Publications in English. Vol. IV, No . 1. April 1918. Seattle, Washington, 45 pp.
57. Ib. p . 36.
58. Ll. 1205-6 of the Pearl.
59. Cp. the severe, but just review by Professor C. Brown in the "Modern Language Notes." Vol. XXXIV, p. 42-3.
60. In "Journal of English and Germanic Philology." Jan. 1921. Vol. XX, 1-21.
61. Ll. 885-7 of the Pearl, cp. below p. 23.
62. D. Appleton, New York 1925, pp. 226.
63. Ib. p. 22.
64. Ib. p. 89.
65. Ib. p. 90.
66. Ib. p. 208.
67. Ib. p. 191.
68. Ib. p. 175.
69. PMLA, Dec. 1925. Vol. XL, pp. 814-27.
70. Canto XXVIII.
71. In "Modern Language Notes." Vol. XLII. 2. (1927), pp. 113-6.
72. B text of the Canterbury Tales 11. 1769-75. Skeat's Chaucer. Vol. IV, p. 185.
73. Ll. 243-4 of the Pearl.
74. Ed. of the Pearl 1921, p. XLII and CHEL I, 331. "Privy" in l. 12.
75. Ll. 483-5 of the Pearl.
76. Ll. 473, 483-5.
77. Any text-book of dogmatics shows this e. g. J. Pohle, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik II, 566, II, 665 etc. From Corinthians I, 13, 9 it can be concluded that the blessed inhabitants of heaven shall see everything clearly in God, what on earth is only an object of theological faith. The absence of envy and competition is inforced in our poem by a comparison with the relation between members of the same body. (ll. 457 seq.), a comparison which descends also from 1 Corinthians (6, 15 and Ch. 12) and which is e. g. elaborated by St. Augustine in "De Civitate Dei" (XXII, 30).
78. "My wreched wylle" in l. 56, "del and gret daunger" in l. 250, "strot" in l. 353.
79. L. 1176.
80. In "De Causa Dei contra Pelagium" ed. 1618. Preface, quoted in Brown loc. cit.
81. Psalm 24. 10, quoted by Augustine in the letter to Paulinus written in 417, No. 186.
82. Augustinus, Tractatus 3 in Jovinianum n. 9.
83. Cp. the letter of Augustine quoted above, besides "De Civitate Dei" XXI, 16. In Evangelium Joannis Tractatus 41, 5, also Chrysostomus, homilia de Adam et Eva; Cyprianus epistola 59, and Fidum etc.
84. De Peccatorum Meritis et Remissione, Liber I. Caput 9. Migne, Patrologia Latina, Vol. 44, p. 114.
85. Augustine, Letter to Mercator No. 193, dating from 418, also to Bishop Bonifacius, No. 98, written in 408, and De Peccatorum Meritis etc. Lib. 1, cap. 19 and lib. 3, c. 2.
86. Sermo 14 de verbis Apostoli.
87. Cp. the list of authorities quoted in Suarez, De gratia VI, 1, 7, Moguntiae 1621, p. 2, and Canisius, Opus catechisticum, Parisiis 1585, p. 413.
88. In Cap. Maiores. Decret 1, 3 tit. 42 de baptismo, quoted by Pohle, Lehrbuch der Dogmatik II, 554.
89. Clement, de summa Trinit, et fide cath. quoted ib.
90. Sermo 66 super Cantica and Epistola ducentesima quadragesima ad Hildefonsum comitem, de Henrico haeretico, printed e. g. in S. Bernardi selectarum epistolarum Liber unicus, Parisiis 1614, p. 351. Bernardus uses the passage "Sinite parvulos venire a me," which the Pearl poet also uses in ll. 718 seq.
91. Sess. 5, canon. 5 de Baptismo and sess. 7 can. 13 de Baptismo. Suarez summarizes the decisions thus: Concilium definit infantes baptizatos vere computari inter fideles, intelligit autem inter fideles justos. Et constant, quia sunt digni regno coelorum. De Gratia, VII, 8, 6, p. 88.
92. Canisius, Opus catechisticum, Parisiis 1585, p. 413 Suarez, De gratia VI, 3, 6 (p. 8), and Gabriele Vasquez, Commentarium ac Disputationum in primam secundae S. Thomae tomus secundus. Antverpiae. MDCXX, disp. CCII. Cap. VI, p. 610-11.
93. L. 417 of the Pearl.
94. Ll. 655-8.
95. L. 660.
96. Brown loc. cit. p. 137.
97. Ll. 447-9, 601-4, 863-4 etc. ll. 601-4 quoted.
98. L. 885.
99. L. 1121.
100. Ll. 675 and 685/6.
101. Epistola No. 167. n. 3. "Induti sunt sancti justitia (Job 29, 14) alius magis, alius minus."
102. John 14, 2.
103. 1 Cor. 15, 41.
104. Commentary to Matthew. Homilium 64. ad Ch. XX, 1-16.
105. Contra haereticos, Lib V, 36, 1-2.
106. Ib. IV, 36, 7.
107. Augustinus, De Sancta Virginitate cap. 26. Migne, Patrologia Vol. XL, col. 410. The same interpretation in "In Joannis Evangelium" Trac. LXVII, cap. 14. Migne, Patrologia Vol. XXX, col. 1812. Canisius loc. cit. p. 1115.
108. Libro Quarto dialogorum, capite tregesimoquinto, quoted by Canisius, loc. cit.
109. Libri IV Sententiarum Dist. XLIX. Paris 1. Q VI. Ed. 1668. Vol. II, p. 533.
110. Summa Theologica I-II. V, 2.
111. Petrus Lombardus, Dist. XLIX Pars I. Migne, Patrologia. Vol. CXCII, col. 957, Duns Scotus, In Lib. IV Sententiarum Dist. L. Qu. V. (ed. 1639, torn. X, pp. 641 and 651). Prosper, De vita contemplativa lib. I, cap. IV, quoted by Canisius, loc. cit. p. 1670.
112. Cp. note 73.
113. "Modern Language Notes" XLII, 2 (1927), pp. 113-6.
114. Quoted in R. Stroppel, Liturgie u. geistliche Dichtung 1050-1300. Frankfurt 1927.
115. In L. dist. 41 Qu. 1, quoted according to Pohle, loc. cit. II, 479.
116. L. 269.
117. L. 221 and cp. 1. 1103-4.
118. L. 735.
119. L. 743-4.
120. The last verse of the poem 1. 1212.
121. Matthew XII, 46.
122. Episcopus Sardensium, cp. about him A. Harnack, Geschichte der altchristlichen Literatur I (1893), p. 246-55, the passage from Clavis LXVI quoted in J. B. Pitra, Spicilegium Solesmense. Tom. II, 341. Parisiis 1855. Pitra quotes a passage, where the Pearl is also among the ninety-two names of Christ, from a Parisian cod. 36 f. 164, 165 III, 447, and passages from Phoebadius Barcinonensis, Eucherius, a bishop of Lyon, etc. Osgood (his ed. p. 82) quotes Augustine, Chrysostomus, Ephren the Syrian for this interpretation.
123. Bonaventura (1221-1257) in serm. 3 dom. 17 p. Pent, in Opera Omnia. Tom. 7 Lugduni 1668, t. 3, p. 199 A and sermo 6 in Rogat. Rupert of Deutz quoted by Osgood p. 82 from Patr. Lat. Vol. 169, col. 1202. Hrabanus Maurus (died in 856) quoted by Pitra loc. cit.
124. Homilia in Evangelia 11, 2 quoted by Osgood p. 82-3.
125. Patrologia Lat. Vol. 184, col. 1069, quoted by Osgood loc. cit.
126. Ad. litt. XII, art. 46, quoted by Pitra loc. cit.
127. Chaucerian and other pieces. Ed. by W. W. Skeat. Oxford 1897, p. 145.
128. Venetiis 1565. Apud Paulum Baleonium. Pars Quarta, Caput XXIV, Sermo I, preached in 1471, p. 232.
129. PMLA. Vol. XII (1897), p. 326-40.
130. Oakden loc. cit. p. 235, 241.
131. I am thinking especially of the new study of poetical language and meter based on functional linguistics initiated in Russia and happily continued by members of the Prague Linguistic Circle.