![]() Latin and Vernacular Song in Medieval Italy Italian Religious Writers of the Trecento Historical Literature (Íslendingabók, Landnámabók) ![]() Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content onĪpocalypticism, Millennialism, and MessianismĪrt of London and South-East England, Post-Conquest to Mon.īirgitta of Sweden and the Birgittine OrderĬhristianity and the Church in Post-Conquest EnglandĬhristianity and the Church in Pre-Conquest EnglandĬhronicles of England and the British IslesĬloud of Unknowing and Related Texts, TheĬontemporary Sagas (Bishops’ sagas and Sturlunga saga)Ĭouncils and Synods of the Medieval Churchĭa Tempo, Antonio and da Sommacampagna, Gidino Discussions of the poems respond to and are informed by previous scholarship but do not attempt to summarize it, instead presenting Putter’s own readings of and introductions to each of the poems. Putter gives background to the poems in terms of literary sources and the poet’s use of them and investigates the author as probably both a cleric and a member of a noble household, and finally as a participant in the tradition of alliterative verse. Separate chapters on each poem and a brief chapter on what can be deduced about the poet follow a discussion of the manuscript and afterlife of the poems. ![]() Horndon, UK: Northcote House, 2001.Īt a mere seventy pages (including notes, brief annotated bibliography, and index) the briefest of the introductions listed here, this is by no means an elementary work rather, it is a clear and useful overview of the poems from a lively and knowledgeable interpreter. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2012.īowers situates the poet within the culture, politics, and society of the court of Richard II, and he provides readings of the four poems (and Saint Erkenwald) largely informed by that historical background.īurrow, J. A. Putter 1996, Burrow 2001, and Bowers 2012 provide recent and useful introductions to the works of the Gawain Poet, intended primarily for a student audience.īowers, John M. Patience, the shortest of the poems, is a poetic retelling of the book of Jonah. Cleanness, also known as Purity, retells the biblical stories of the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and Belshazzar’s feast, while instructing in spiritual purity. Pearl is a dream vision in which the poem’s speaker converses with his lost daughter, now in heaven, who exhorts him to accept her loss. The poem tells the story of the quest of Gawain to find the Knight of the Green Chapel, whom Gawain has beheaded in Arthur’s court and from whom he is to receive a return blow, and of Gawain’s temptation by the lady of a mysterious castle encountered on the way. ![]() Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is widely considered the best Arthurian romance in English. It has long been the dominant conjecture of scholarship that the four poems are by the same anonymous author (a fifth, Saint Erkenwald, not in the same manuscript, is no longer usually held to be by the same poet). The four poems are all written in the same Northwest Midland dialect of Middle English and they share various formal and thematic features, including that three of them are written using the alliterative meter associated with what has been called the alliterative revival (the fourth, Pearl, is a rhyming poem that employs alliteration throughout). 3), a small illustrated parchment manuscript of about 1400: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The “ Gawain Poet” (also the “ Pearl Poet”) is the name commonly given to the presumed single author of four Middle English poems uniquely preserved in London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x. ![]()
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