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The Pearl—A New Interpretation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Walter Kirkland Greene
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Extract

Spenser, realizing how doubtfully his allegory or dark conceit might be construed, wrote a letter to Sir Walter Raleigh explaining, in part, the general structure of The Faerie Queene. The poet of the Pearl, except within the poem itself, has given us no inkling of its meaning. The attempt to find that meaning has been and is yet a matter of unusual interest to scholars.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , December 1925 , pp. 814 - 827
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1925

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References

1 C. G. Osgood, The Pearl, 1906.

2 G. G. Coulton, “In Defense of Pearl,” Mod. Lang. Rev., II, 39-43.

3 W. H. Schofield, “The Nature and Fabric of The Pearl,” P.M.L.A. XIX, 154-215; “Symbolism, Allegory and Autobiography in The Pearl,” P.M.L.A., XXIV, 585-675.

4 H. Bateson, Patience, Manchester, 1912, Introd., p. 7.

5 Ibid., p. 61.

6 Schofield. P.M.LA.. XXIV, 645.

7 Cf. Schofield, P.M.L.A., XXIV, 657.

8 The article by Professor Carleton Brown in the P.M.L.A., XIX: 115-153, furnishes convincing proof that the author of the Pearl was an ecclesiastic.

9 Professor Schofield brings out this point admirably, P.M.L.A., XIX, 213f.

10 P.M.L.A., XIX, 629-30.

11 Schofield, P.M.L.A., XXIV, 642.

12 Note Lydgate's poem in explanation of the custom of devoutly kissing stone, wood, earth or iron (Min. Poems of Lydgate, ed. MacCracken, I, 116).

13 In a Harvard lecture.