“Precios perle wythouten spotte”: Accepting the Unknowable in Pearl

<p>The fourteenth-century Middle English poem <em>Pearl, </em>authored by the anonymous <em>Pearl-</em>poet, survives in a manuscript known as London, British Library, Cotton MS Nero A.x. This dream vision, narrated by a grieving father, tells the story of his journey to Paradise, where he encounters his infant daughter, now older, regal, and wise, proffering admonishments with the authority of God to her tearful father. meeting with her in Paradise. Drawing on Caroline Walker Bynum’s work on medieval European conceptions of death and resurrection, J. Stephen Russell’s work on the dream vision genre, and Karl Steel’s work on oysters as liminal figures, this thesis reads <em>Pearl</em>’s function as a dream vision as a rhetorical strategy that demonstrates new ways of conceptualizing the ambiguities of death and the afterlife. As the Dreamer attempts to reconcile the disparity between what he sees (bodily decay), and what he is asked to believe (the Christian promise of resurrection), the poem argues that this disparity is unavoidable and that a methodical or scientific understanding of resurrection is not just impossible, but unnecessary. The liminality of the dream vision genre combined with the cognitive dissonance present in the poem’s dialogue and the ambiguity of the Pearl-Maiden's appearance</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Arts (MA)

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters Thesis

Year dc:date.available

2021

Author dc:creator

• Ishee, Jana

Contributors dc:contributor

• Leah Parker
• Alexandra Valint
• Emily Stanback

• Literature in English, British Isles
• Medieval Studies
• Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion

Repository record dc:identifier

https://aquila.usm.edu/masters_theses/827

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:aquila.usm.edu:masters_theses-1887