Aers, David. "The Self Mourning: Reflections on Pearl." Speculum 68, No. 1 (1993): 59-73.

Finds that the institution of the church is strangely absent in a poem that deals with the self and Christian teaching.

Andrew, Malcolm and Ronald Waldron, editors. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. York Medieval Texts, 2nd series. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979, 15-17, 29-36.

Places Pearl in the dream-vision tradition and emphasizes spiritual transformation of the dreamer. Also has a select bibliography.

Blenkner, Louis. "The Pattern of Traditional Images in Pearl." Studies in Philology 68, No. 1 (1971): 26-49.

Shows how traditional patterns found in medieval theories of imagery are used in the poem to demonstrate the proper signification of the pearl symbol.

——."The Theological Structure of Pearl" (1968). In The Middle English Pearl: Critical Essays, edited by John Conley, 220-65. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

Makes an analogy between the poem's tripartite structure and the traditional three-part ascent of the soul to God.

Bloomfield, Morton W. "Some Notes on Pearl (lines 1-12, 61, 775-76, 968)" (1964). In Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later, edited by E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill, 300-02. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969.

Offers corrections to previous translations of four passages.

Bogdanos, Theodore. Pearl, Image of the Ineffable: A Study in Medieval Poetic Symbolism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983. 168 p.

Interprets Pearl through a study of medieval poetic symbolism.

Borroff, Marie, translator. Pearl: A New Verse Translation. New York: Norton, 1977, vii-xxi.

Discusses thematic links with the other poems in the manuscript as well as symbolism, literary background, and design.

Brewer, D. S. "Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet." In Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C S. Lewis, edited by John Lawlor, 54-85. London: Edward Arnold, 1966.

Describes the poet's use of fourteenth-century terms to convey the abstraction of 'courtesy' (the good), which he identifies with Christian love.

Conley, John. "Pearl and a Lost Tradition" (1955). In The Middle English Pearl: Critical Essays, edited by John Conley, 50-72. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

Insists that Pearl is a Christian consolatio.

Davenport, W. A. The Art of the Gawain-Poet. London: Athlone Press, 1978, 7-18, 51-4.

Argues that the poem is a fiction in which the narrator reveals his change from depression to a more balanced state of mind.

Eckhardt, Caroline D. "Woman as Mediator in the Middle English Romances." Journal of Popular Culture 14, No. 1 (1980): 94-107.

Discusses the role of woman as intercessor revealed in the narratives of Middle English romances and the response of audiences to them.

Finlayson, John. "Pearl: Landscape and Vision." Studies in Philology 71, No. 3 (1974): 314-43.

Explains the relationship of the dreamer to his three locations and shows what this progression reveals about his experience.

Garrett, Robert Max. The Pearl: An Interpretation. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1918. 45 p.

Sees the pearl as a symbol for the Holy Eucharist.

Gordon, E. V., editor. Introduction to Pearl. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953, ix-lii.

Covers manuscript, form, theme, symbolism, sources, language and author, as well as major points of critical controversy.

Greene, Walter Kirkland. "The Pearl—A New Interpretation." PMLA 40, No. 4 (1925): 814-27.

Emphasizes the theme of the fallen soul and its redemption.

Hieatt, Constance. "Pearl and the Dream-Vision Tradition." Studia Neophilologica 37 (1965): 139-45.

Argues that the poet uses the dream both as a unifying device for his poem and as a valid way of presenting ambiguous or difficult material.

Hoffman, Stanton de Voren. "The Pearl: Notes for an Interpretation." Modern Philology 58, No. 2 (1960): 73-80.

Basing his interpretation on the pearl symbol and motifs of innocence, death, and renewal, argues that the poem is an elegy with the theme of spiritual adventure, a quest of the soul towards truth.

Horgan, A. D. "Justice in The Pearl." Review of English Studies 32 (1981): 173-80.

Shows how the debate about the child's salvation contrasts traditional Western ideas of justice with the spiritual concept of justice revealed in God's unlimited grace and mercy.

Johnson, Lynn Staley. The Voice of the Gawain-Poet. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984, xvi-xix, 144-210.

Shows how the complex imagery of Pearl can be understood by revealing parallels between the narrator's spiritual growth and elements of the medieval Mary Magdalene tradition.

Johnson, Wendell Stacy. "The Imagery and Diction of the Pearl: Toward an Interpretation." ELH 20, No. 3 (1953): 161-80.

Argues that the poem embodies the contrasting meaning revealed by two groups of images, those depicting this world and those depicting the next.

McGalliard, John C. "Links, Language, and Style in the Pear" (1963). In Studies in Language, Literature, and Culture of the Middle Ages and Later, edited by E. Bagby Atwood and Archibald A. Hill, 279-299. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969.

Describes concatenating links among stanzas and their groups; mentions difficulties in meter, dialect, and syntax; and discusses the intensity of connotation produced by "symbolic forms" where sound is especially suited to meaning in some word groups.

Madeleva, Sister Mary. Pearl: A Study in Spiritual Dryness. New York: Appleton, 1925, 89-193.

Regards the pearl as a symbol for the poet's soul, and sees the poem as an exposition on interior desolation.

Moorman, Charles. The Pearl-Poet. Twayne English Author Series. New York: Twayne, 1968, 1-63.

Suggests elegiac theme of acceptance through suffering and the revelation of death as part of the universal plan.

Nichols, Jonathan. "Expectations of Courtesy Confounded: The Dreamer and the Maiden in Pearl." In The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain-Poet. Suffolk, Great Britain: D. S. Brewer, 1985, 103-111.

Argues that the poet overturns dreamer's and readers' dual expectations regarding authority in family and medieval social order to illustrate differences between heavenly and earthly kingdoms.

Nolan, Barbara. The Gothic Visionary Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977, xiii-xvii, 156-204.

Shows how the poet combines symbolism of form and number with dream-vision genre to demonstrate the spiritual transformation of the narrator.

Petroff, Elizabeth. "Landscape in Pearl: Transformation of Nature." Chaucer Review 16, No. 2 (1981): 181-93.

Landscape imagery of the poem is related both to the liturgy for the Assumption of the Virgin and to the blessing of medicinal herbs and agricultural harvests.

Richardson, F. E. "The Pearl: A Poem and Its Audience." Neophilologus 46 (1962): 308-15.

Discusses the action by which the four great themes of Pearl are developed.

Robertson, D. W., Jr. "The 'Heresy' of The Pearl" (1955). In The Middle English Pearl: Critical Essays, edited by John Conley, 291-96. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

Answers the charge of heresy in the poem by demonstrating the orthodoxy of the poet's use of the parable of the Workers in the Vineyard.

——. "The Pearl as Symbol." Modern Language Notes 65, No. 3 (1950): 155-61.

Discusses the pearl symbol in terms of the four levels of scriptural exegesis in use during the Middle Ages.

Russell, J. Stephen. The English Dream Vision: Anatomy of a Form. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988, 139-42, 159-74.

Discusses the dream-vision form followed by deconstructionist criticism of Pearl and Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and House of Fame.

Sklute, Larry M. "Expectation and Fulfillment in Pearl." Philological Quarterly 52, No. 4 (1973): 663-79.

Focuses on readers, whose expectations about consolation are fulfilled because they, like the narrator, have struggled to understand by faith truths about the divine.

Spearing, A. C. "Symbolic and Dramatic Development in Pearl (1962). In The Middle English Pearl: Critical Essays, edited by John Conley, 122-48. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

Discusses how the poem embodies a dramatic process of both symbolic and human development.

Stern, Milton R. "An Approach to the Pearl" (1955). In The Middle English Pearl: Critical Essays, edited by John Conley, 73-85. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1970.

Discusses the poem in terms of gemology and the four levels of scriptural exegesis in use during the Middle Ages.

Tolkien, J. R. R., trans. Introduction to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo. London: Allen and Unwin, 1975, 13-24.

Discusses dramatization as well as formal relationships among debate, elegy, allegory, symbolism, and dream-vision.

Turville-Petre, Thorlac. The Alliterative Revival. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1977, 66-8.

Describes the poem's circular form in terms of its rhyming alliterative stanzas, their numerical symbolism, patterns of stanza linking and refrains, and the grouping of stanzas and group themes.

Williams, Margaret A., translator. Introduction to The Pearl-Poet: His Complete Works. New York: Random House, 1967, 3-18, 62-83.

Discusses manuscript, language and author, and the alliterative movement, and places Pearl in its literary tradition.

Wilson, Edward. "Pearl." In The Gawain-Poet. Medieval and Renaissance Authors Series. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976, 1-45.

Emphasizes Pear's rhetorical arrangement and recognizes many of its medieval analogues, especially the Middle English Abraham and Isaac dramas.