Pearl: Text and Translation - Paperback

by Jane Beal (Editor), Jane Beal (Translator)

Back Jacket

The fourteenth-century Middle English poem Pearl is one of the best dream vision poems ever written, yet its language (the Northwest Midlands dialect of late-medieval England) and literary allusions (to biblical, mythological, and medieval works) make it difficult for modern readers to understand.

This new dual-language edition of Pearl provides the original Middle English with a facing-page modern English translation. It includes a comprehensive introduction, annotations of key words and ideas, reproduction of the four manuscript illustrations, a literary sourcebook, and lists of biblical sources, significant liturgical dates, and the concatenation words. Literary and biblical sources for the poem are provided as appendices.

Author Biography

Jane Beal is Associate Professor of English at the University of La Verne. She has also authored The Signifying Power of Pearl (Routledge, 2017) and co-authored and co-edited Approaches to Teaching the Middle English Pearl (MLA, 2018). See https: //medievalpearl.wordpress.com to learn more.