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Editions of Pearl

  1. Anderson, J. J., ed. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; Pearl; Cleanness; Patience. Rutland, VT: Tuttle, 1996. [Revision of 1976 Everyman edition by A. C. Cawley and J. J. Anderson.]
  2. Andrew, Malcolm, and Ronald Waldron, eds. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. London: Edward Arnold, 1978. Third ed. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996.
  3. Cawley, A. C. Pearl; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. New York: Dutton, 1962.
  4. Chase, Stanley P. The Pearl: The Text of the Fourteenth-Century English Poem. Boston: Humphries, 1932.
  5. Gollancz, Sir Israel, ed. and trans. Pearl. London: Chatto and Windus, 1891; rev. ed., 1897. Second ed. as Pearl, Edited with Modern Rendering, Together with Boccaccio’s Olympia. London: Chatto and Windus, 1921.
  6. Gordon, E. V., ed. Pearl. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953.
  7. Hillmann, Sister Mary V., ed. and trans. The Pearl, Medieval Text with a Literal Translation and Interpretation. [Convent Station, NJ]: College of St. Elizabeth, 1961; rev. ed. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1967.
  8. Moorman, Charles. The Works of the Gawain-Poet. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1977.
  9. Morris, Richard. Early English Alliterative Poems in the West-Midland Dialect of the Fourteenth Century. EETS o.s. 1. London: Trübner, 1864. Rpt. London: Oxford University Press, 1965.
  10. Osgood, Charles G., ed. The Pearl. Boston: D. C. Heath, 1906.
  11. Vantuono, William, ed. and trans. The Pearl Poems: An Omnibus Edition. Vol. 1: Pearl and Cleanness. New York: Garland, 1984.

Bibliographies and Reviews of Scholarship

  1. Andrew, Malcolm. The Gawain-Poet: An Annotated Bibliography, 1839–77. New York: Garland, 1979.
  2. Blanch, Robert J. “The Current State of Pearl Criticism.” Chaucer Yearbook 3 (1996), 21–33. [Review essay on trends in scholarship.]
  3. ———. “Supplement to the Gawain-Poet: An Annotated Bibliography, 1978–85.” Chaucer Review 25.4 (1991), 363–86.
  4. Eldredge, Laurence. “The State of Pearl Studies Since 1933.” Viator 6 (1975), 171–94. [Divides scholarship on Pearl into five categories: elegy or allegory debate; heretical or orthodox instruction; pearl symbolism; search for author; historicism.]
  5. Foley, Michael. “The Gawain-Poet: An Annotated Bibliography, 1978–85.” Chaucer Review 23.3 (1989), 250–82.

Criticism

  1. Ackerman, Robert W. “The Pearl-Maiden and the Penny.” Romance Philology 17 (1964), 615–23. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 149–62. [English and Continental sources for female instructress and the parable of the vineyard; penny as Eucharistic host.]
  2. Aers, David. “The Self Mourning: Reflections on Pearl.” Speculum 68 (1993), 54–73. [Situates narrator within sociopolitical interests of late fourteenth-century court culture; narrator’s individualism at odds with maiden’s idealization of Catholic communal values.]
  3. Andrew, Malcolm. “Theories of Authorship.” In Brewer and Gibson. Pp. 23–33. [Thorough review of theories of authorship.]
  4. Arthur, Ross G. “The Day of Judgment is Now: A Johannine Pattern in the Middle English Pearl.” American Benedictine Review 38 (1987), 227–42. [Pearl in relation to medieval sign theory.]
  5. Astell, Ann W. The Song of Songs in the Middle Ages. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990. [Maiden as Anima, or the Bernardine trope of mystical brideship. Male protagonist must encompass feminine principle within himself.]
  6. Barr, Helen. “Pearl — or ‘The Jeweller’s Tale.’” Medium Ævum 69 (2000), 59–79. [Pearls and gems in late fourteenth-century aristocratic culture; poem’s “mercantile consciousness” (61) and concerns with social order.]
  7. Bennett, Michael. “The Court of Richard II and the Promotion of Literature.” In Chaucer’s England: Literature in Historical Context. Ed. Barbara Hanawalt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992. Pp. 3–20. [Richard II’s Cheshire connections and literary patronage.]
  8. Bennett, Michael. “The Historical Background.” In Brewer and Gibson. Pp. 71–90. [Locates poems of Cotton Nero A.x. within court circle of Richard II; Cheshire connections.]
  9. Bishop, Ian. Pearl in Its Setting: A Critical Study of the Structure and Meaning of the Middle English Poem. Oxford: Blackwell, 1968. [Genre, especially allegory; idea of innocence; number symbolism.]
  10. ———. “Relatives at the Court of Heaven: Contrasted Treatments of an Idea in Piers Plowman and Pearl.” In Medieval Literature and Antiquities: Studies in Honor of Basil Cottle. Ed. Myra Stokes and T. L. Burton. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987. Pp. 111–18. [Legal and heavenly courts and advantages of having relatives at both.]
  11. Blanch, Robert J., ed. Sir Gawain and Pearl: Critical Essays. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1966. [Collection of essays.]
  12. Blanch, Robert J., Miriam Youngerman Miller, and Julian N. Wasserman, eds. Text and Matter: New Critical Perspectives of the Pearl-Poet. Troy, NY: Whitson Press, 1991. [Collection of essays.]
  13. Blanch, Robert J., and Julian N. Wasserman. From Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1995. [Thematic study from standpoint of providential history; focus on miracles, language, role of narrator, covenants, iconography of the hand.]
  14. Blenkner, Louis, O. S. B. “The Theological Structure of Pearl.” Traditio 24 (1968), 43–75. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 220–71. [Reading of poem according to itineraries of mystical ascent, especially Hugh of St. Victor and Bonaventure.]
  15. Bogdanos, Theodore. Pearl, Image of the Ineffable: A Study in Medieval Poetic Symbolism. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1983. [Medieval symbolism and sign theory — e.g., Pseudo-Dionysius, Augustine, Aquinas, Bonaventure.]
  16. Borroff, Marie. “Pearl’s ‘Maynful Mone’: Crux, Simile, and Structure.” In Acts of Interpretation: The Text in its Contexts, 700–1600. Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature in Honor of E. Talbot Donaldson. Ed. Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1982. Pp. 159–72. [Moon as example of roundness; poem’s contrasting linear and circular modes.]
  17. ———. “Narrative Artistry in St. Erkenwald and the Gawain-Group: The Case for Common Authorship Reconsidered.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006), 41–76. [Argument, on basis of verbal artistry, for common authorship.]
  18. Bowers, John. “Pearl in Its Royal Setting: Ricardian Poetry Revisited.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995), 111–55. [Reading of Pearl in relation to Richard II’s court; argues poem is consistently royalist, and imagery of poem reiterates Richard’s regalian themes and images.]
  19. ———. “The Politics of Pearl.” Exemplaria 7 (1995), 419–41. [Parable of vineyard as exemplary of late fourteenth-century social concerns, especially unruly labor.]
  20. ———. The Politics of Pearl: Court Poetry in The Age of Richard II. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2001.
  21. Brewer, Derek, and Jonathan Gibson, eds. A Companion to the Gawain-Poet. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1997. [Indispensable collection of essays.]
  22. Bridges, Margaret. “The Sense of an Ending: The Case of the Dream-Vision.” Dutch Quarterly Review 14 (1984), 81–94. [Ending of poem in failed closure and textual indeterminacy.]
  23. Bullon-Fernandez, Maria. “Byȝonde þe Water: Courtly and Religious Desire in Pearl.” Studies in Philology 91 (1994), 35–49. [Contrasts between religious and courtly desire; poetic play of erotic desire violates both categories.]
  24. Cherniss, Michael. Boethian Apocalypse: Studies in Middle English Vision Poetry. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1987. Pp. 151–68. [Pearl as Boethian vision.]
  25. Clopper, Lawrence, “Pearl and the Consolation of Scripture.” Viator 23 (1991), 231–45. [Poem as progressive meditative itinerary based on Augustine.]
  26. Condren, Edward I. The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet: Beyond Ph. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002. [Numerical organization of Pearl, along with other poems of Cotton Nero A.x, according to the principle of divine proportion or golden section called “phi” in modern mathematics.]
  27. Conley, John, ed. The Middle English Pearl: Critical Essays. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955. [Collection of essays.]
  28. Cox, Catherine S. “Pearl’s ‘Precios Pere’: Gender, Language, and Difference.” Chaucer Review 32.4 (1998), 377–90. [Gender binaries inform poem’s poetics and drive its formations of transgressive desire, with feminine representing the plural, carnal, and literal.]
  29. Davenport, W. A. The Art of the Gawain-Poet. New Jersey: Humanities Press, 1978. [Pearl chapter gives critical reading of development of narrator and of contrasts between literal and allegorical modes.]
  30. Despres, Denise. “Ghostly Sights”: Visual Meditation in Late-Medieval Literature. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1989. [Pearl addresses Christian conversion and specifically “penitential practice of visual meditation” (p. 91).]
  31. Donkin, R. A. Beyond Price: Pearls and Pearl Fishing: Origins to the Age of Discovery. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1998. [“Pearls in the Medieval World,” pp. 250–75, discusses medieval views on natural history of pearls; harvesting and international trade of pearls in Middle Ages.]
  32. Donner, Morton. “Word Play and Word Form in Pearl.” Chaucer Review 24 (1989), 166–82. [Variation in morphological form of link words as important component of poem’s lexical play.]
  33. Duggan, Hoyt N. “Libertine Scribes and Maidenly Editors: Meditations on Textual Criticism and Metrics.” In English Historical Metrics. Ed. C. B. McCully and J. J. Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 219–37. [Contends scribe(s) consistently removed or added syllables, mismetering the poet’s regularly iambic tetrameter line; see his similar argument in Brewer and Gibson, pp. 221–42.]
  34. Earl, James W. “Saint Margaret and the Pearl Maiden.” Modern Philology 70 (1972), 1–8. [Virgin martyr St. Margaret as source for the Pearl-maiden.]
  35. Edmondson, George. “Pearl: The Shadow of the Object, the Shape of the Law.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004), 29–63. [Psychoanalytic reading, informed by Lacan and Žižek, of mourning and ideology.]
  36. Fein, Susannah Greer. “Twelve-Line Stanza Forms in Middle English and the Date of Pearl.” Speculum 72 (1997), 367–97. [Contends Pearl uses a stanza intermediate between octet/quatrain form and the ballade and that the stanza form dates the poem between 1375 and 1385.]
  37. Field, Rosalind. “The Heavenly Jerusalem in Pearl.” Modern Language Review 81 (1986), 7–17. [Poem’s uses of and divergence from biblical Apocalypse text; image of wounded lamb in Apocalypse MSS.]
  38. Finlayson, John. “Pearl: Landscape and Vision.” Studies in Philology 71 (1974), 314–43. [Description of landscape as objective correlative to narrator’s spiritual understanding.]
  39. Fleming, John. “The Centuple Structure of the Pearl.” In The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century. Ed. Bernard S. Levy and Paul E. Szarmach. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981. Pp. 81–98. [101, the number of stanzas in poem, as number of spiritual consolation].
  40. Gatta, John. “Transformation Symbolism and the Liturgy of the Mass in Pearl.” Modern Philology 71 (1974), 243–56. [Reading of ritualistic allusions, with focus on sacramental interests.]
  41. Ginsberg, Warren. “Place and Dialectic in Pearl and Dante’s Paradiso.” ELH 55 (1988), 731–53. [Pearl, like Dante’s Paradiso, located in a spatial as well as discursive dialectic.]
  42. Gross, Charlotte. “Courtly Language in Pearl.” In Blanch, Miller, and Wasserman. Pp. 79–91. [Franciscan and French sources for courtly language and tensions between eroticism and spirituality.]
  43. Hamilton, Marie P. “The Meaning of the Middle English Pearl.” PMLA 70 (1955), 805–25. [Poem as Christian allegory; symbolism of garden, etc.]
  44. Harwood, Britton J. “Pearl as Diptych.” In Blanch, Miller, and Wasserman. Pp. 61–78. [Study of chiastic structure; influence of Gothic diptych.]
  45. Hoffman, Stanton de Voren. “The Pearl: Notes for an Interpretation.” Modern Philology 58 (1960), 73–80. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 86–102. [Pearl as elegy.]
  46. Horgan, A. D. “Justice in the Pearl.” Review of English Studies 32 (1981), 173–80. [Contrasts between social and Christian ideas of justice.]
  47. Johnson, Wendell Stacey. “The Imagery and Diction of the Pearl: Toward an Interpretation.” ELH 20 (1953), 161–80. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 27–49. [Central conflict between world and eternity mirrored in images of nature and of art.]
  48. Kean, Patricia M. The Pearl: An Interpretation. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1967. [Reading of images, with focus on contrast between earthly limitation and spiritual perfection.]
  49. Lagerholm, Annika Sylén. Pearl and Contemplative Writing. Lund: Lund Studies in English, 2005. [Pearl as contemplative text in tradition of Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Richard Rolle, and Walter Hilton; limits of language in expressing the ineffable.]
  50. Lightbown, R. W. Medieval European Jewellery: With a Catalogue of the Collection in the Victoria & Albert Museum. London: Victoria & Albert Museum, 1992.
  51. Luttrell, A. C. “Pearl: Symbolism in a Garden Setting.” Neophilologus 49 (1965), 160–76. Rpt. in Blanch. Pp. 60–85. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 297–324. [Meanings of “erber” and “huyle”; conventions of medieval gardens.]
  52. Lynch, Kathryn. The High Medieval Dream Vision: Poetry, Philosophy, and Literary Form. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988. [Locates dream vision in Pearl within late developments of genre.]
  53. Macrae-Gibson, O. D. “Pearl: The Link-Words and the Thematic Structure.” Neophilologus 52 (1968), 54–64. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 203–19. [Reading of link-terms.]
  54. Mann, Jill. “Satisfaction and Payment in Middle English Literature.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 5 (1983), 17–48. [“Innoghe” in Pearl as “endlessly sufficient abundance” (p. 29).]
  55. Marti, Kevin. Body, Heart, and Text in the Pearl-Poet. Queenston, Ontario: Mellen Press, 1991. [Pearl as replay of a Eucharistic drama, with spatial relations figured as both human body and Gothic cathedral.]
  56. Meyer, Ann R. Medieval Allegory and the Building of the New Jerusalem. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003. [Pearl as Gothic architectural form.]
  57. Muscatine, Charles. “The Pearl Poet: Style as Defense.” In Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1972. Pp. 37–69. [Discussion of poet’s detachment from contemporary history and poem’s fusion of courtly and religious values.]
  58. Nicholls, Jonathan. The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain-Poet. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1985. [Courtesy books in the Middle Ages; short analysis of conflicting codes of courteous conduct in Pearl.]
  59. Nolan, Barbara. The Gothic Visionary Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977. [Pearl as visionary quest; vision and “visionary perspective” as central Gothic tropes.]
  60. Olmert, Michael. “Game-Playing, Moral Purpose, and the Structure of Pearl.” Chaucer Review 21 (1987), 383–403. [Pearl and language of games; influence of medieval board games.]
  61. Osberg, Richard. “The Prosody of Middle English Pearl and the Alliterative Lyric Tradition.” In English Historical Metrics. Ed. C. B. McCully and J. J. Anderson. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Pp. 150–74. [Derivation of poem from alliterative long line or from French metered poetry; argues that half-line composition of Pearl similar to alliterative Harley lyrics.]
  62. Patch, Howard R. The Other World, According to Descriptions in Medieval Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1950. [General study of topos of other world.]
  63. Peck, Russell A., “Number as Cosmic Language.” In Essays in the Numerical Criticism of Medieval Literature. Ed. Carolyn D. Eckhardt. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1980. Pp. 15–64. [Boethian and Augustinian number symbolism, with application to Pearl (pp. 44–51, 58–64).]
  64. Phillips, Heather. “The Eucharistic Allusions of Pearl.” Medieval Studies 47 (1985), 474–86. [Liturgical references; unfolding of poem imitates process of the mass, with pearl as Eucharistic wafer.]
  65. Prior, Sandra Pierson. The Fayre Formez of the Pearl Poet. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 1996. [Biblical sources of imagery; Pearl chapter addresses lamb and enthroned God.]
  66. Putter, Ad. Introduction to the Gawain-Poet. London: Longman, 1996. [Pearl’s narrative evasiveness; poem’s continental analogues.]
  67. Reed, Teresa P. “Mary, the Maiden, and Metonymy in Pearl.” South Atlantic Review 65 (2000), 134–62. [Symbolism of Mary as metonym for pearl.]
  68. Reichardt, Paul F. “ ‘Several Illuminations, Coarsely Executed’: The Illustrations of the Pearl Manuscript.” Studies in Iconography 18 (1997), 119–142. [Revises critical deprecation of manuscript illustrations to argue that sequence possesses significant coherence of content and design.]
  69. Rhodes, James. “The Dreamer Redeemed: Exile and the Kingdom in the Middle English Poem Pearl.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16 (1994), 119–42. [Reading of debate section in terms of Bakhtinian dialogics, locating dreamer’s voice in context of late medieval views on justification and salvation.]
  70. Riddy, Felicity. “Jewels in Pearl.” In Brewer and Gibson. Pp. 143–55. [Discussion of pearls, gems, jewelers; also patronage for art works.]
  71. Robertson, D. W., Jr. “The ‘Heresy’ of The Pearl.” Modern Language Notes 65 (1950), 152–55. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 291–96. [Exegetical explication of parable of vineyard and defense of its orthodoxy.]
  72. ———. “The Pearl as a Symbol.” Modern Language Notes 65 (1950), 144–61. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 18–26. [Symbolism of pearl and reading according to four-fold allegorical method.]
  73. Røstvig, Maren-Sofie. “Numerical Composition in Pearl: A Theory.” English Studies 48 (1967), 326–32. [Study of number and number symbolism.]
  74. Russell, Stephen J. The English Dream Vision: Anatomy of a Form. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988. Pp. 159–74. [Contextualizing of poem within dream-vision form; Pearl and instability of language.]
  75. Shoaf, R. A. “Purgatorio and Pearl: Transgression and Transcendence.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 32 (1990), 152–68. [Compares endings of Purgatorio and Pearl, especially fording of Lethe and dreamer’s attempt to cross the stream.]
  76. Silar, Theodore I. “An Analysis of the Legal Sense of the Word fyn (finalis concordia) in Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Chaucer’s Works, and Especially the Ending of Troilus and Criseyde.” Chaucer Review 32 (1998), 282–309. [Poem’s legal puns; review of scholarship on poem’s use of legal language.]
  77. Sklute, Larry M. “Expectation and Fulfillment in Pearl.” Philological Quarterly 52 (1973), 663–79. [Narrative trajectory informed by reader’s identification and frustration with narrator.]
  78. Spearing, A. C. “Symbolic and Dramatic Development in Pearl.” Modern Philology 60 (1962), 1–12. Rpt. in Blanch. Pp. 98–119. [Dramatic rather than allegorical reading of pearl, arguing that pearl transforms as narrator changes.]
  79. ———. The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970. [Important general study; Pearl chapter explores use of visual arts; dramatic progress of narrator; sources of topoi.]
  80. Staley, Lynn. The Voice of the Gawain-Poet. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. [Exegetically informed study of the four poems of Cotton Nero A.x.]
  81. ———. “Pearl and the Contingencies of Love and Piety.” In Medieval Literature and Historical Inquiry. Ed. David Aers. Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 2000. Pp. 83–114. [Builds case for identifying narrator as Thomas of Woodstock and the Pearl-maiden as Isabel, his daughter, and for reading poem as commemorative elegy on her entrance into house of Minoresses in London. Examination of cultural patronage.]
  82. Stanbury, Sarah. Seeing the Gawain-Poet: Description and the Act of Perception. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991. [Techniques of focalized gaze in poems of Cotton Nero A.x.]
  83. ———. “Feminist Masterplots: The Gaze on the Body of Pearl’s Dead Girl.” In Feminist Approaches to the Body in Medieval Literature. Ed. Linda Lomperis and Sarah Stanbury. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993. Pp. 96–115. [Gendered narrative gaze of poem in relation to feminist film theory.]
  84. ———. “The Body and the City in Pearl.” Representations 47 (1994), 271–85. [Psychoanalytic, exegetical, and phenomenological frameworks for mourning as gendered narrative, centered around tropes of Jerusalem as mother.]
  85. Stern, Milton R. “An Approach to The Pearl.” JEGP 54 (1955), 684–92. Rpt. in Conley. Pp. 73–85. [Four-fold allegorical method; symbolism of gems and flowers.]
  86. Thorpe, Douglas. A New Earth: The Labor of Language in Pearl, Herbert’s Temple, and Blake’s Jerusalem. Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 1991. Pp. 27–72. [New Testament parables as source for poem’s metaphorical language and “sacramental poetics.”]
  87. Tomasch, Sylvia. “A Pearl Punnology.” JEGP 88 (1989), 1–20. [Argues that grammar and language underwrite idea of interconnectedness; in-depth analysis of “spot.”]
  88. Turville-Petre, Thorlac. “The Pearl-Poet in His ‘Fayre Regioun.’” In Essays on Ricardian Literature in Honour of J. A. Burrow. Ed. Alastair J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. Pp. 276–94. [Debate over regional versus national poetry in late fourteenth century; Pearl non-metropolitan (non-London), but less regional than other Cotton Nero A.x. poems.]
  89. Vance, Eugene. “Pearl: Love and the Poetics of Participation.” In Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature. Ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 131–49. [Theology of participation in Pearl as well as in Grosseteste, Augustine, Pseudo-Dionysius, and Plotinus.]
  90. Vantuono, William. “Patience, Cleanness, Pearl, and Gawain: The Case for Common Authorship.” Annuale Mediaevale 12 (1971), 37–69. [Evidence based on language, imagery, and structure.]
  91. ———. “John de Mascy of Sale and the Pearl Poems.” Manuscripta 25 (1981), 77–88. [Controversy about authorship; evidence for John de Mascy’s candidacy.]
  92. Watkins, John. “‘Sengeley in Synglere’: Pearl and Late Medieval Individualism.” Chaucer Yearbook 2 (1995), 117–36. [Text and late Ricardian social concerns; Parable of Vineyard and Statute of Laborers.]
  93. Watson, Nicholas. “The Gawain-Poet as Vernacular Theologian.” In Brewer and Gibson. Pp. 293–313. [Pearl and contemporary vernacular religious instruction; poem’s economy of salvation as “aristocratized theology” privileging lay gentry over career religious.]
  94. Watts, Ann Chalmers. “Pearl, Inexpressibility, and Poems of Human Loss.” PMLA 99 (1984), 26–40. [Poem’s reiterated motif of inexpressible loss as enduring literary topos.]
  95. Whitaker, Muriel. “Pearl and some Illustrated Apocalypse Manuscripts.” Viator 12 (1981), 183–201. [Well-illustrated examination of illuminated apocalypse manuscripts that may have served as sources for poem.]
  96. Wilson, Edward. “Word Play and the Interpretation of Pearl.” Medium Aevum 40 (1971), 116–34. [Poem’s language and verbal echoes as literal rather than allegorical experience.]
  97. Wimsatt, James I. Allegory and Mirror: Tradition and Structure in Middle English Literature. New York: Pegasus, 1970. [Pearl and Divine Comedy; literary analogues of Pearl-maiden in marguerite poems; Pearl and medieval allegory.]