Promo Post: Pearl

[narya_flame]

Summary:  Like Sir Orfeo and Sir Gawain, this is a late Middle English poem (written in a North-West Midlands dialect of Middle English).  A grieving father experiences a dream-vision of a beautiful maiden.  She tries to explain the glories of heaven to him, but he cannot comprehend them, and on trying to join her, he wakes up.  He is left consoled and reflecting on his faith.

Tolkien encountered the poem as a student, and both taught and translated it as a scholar.  Its elegiac tone will feel familiar to fans of Tolkien’s work, and while the text itself is dense, it’s well worth reading, re-reading and unpacking.

 

Why should I check out this canon:  If you’re interested in the texts Tolkien read and absorbed, and how they shaped the tone and content of his mythology, this is definitely one for your list. It’s is a smaller, more reflective Tolkien text: there's no cast of thousands, no epic adventures, but still plenty to explore. Who sent the Dream Vision? Who is the Pearl Poet – are they also the Gawain poet, or are they someone else? Is the poem an elegy, an allegory, both? Something completely different? Where is the Pearl-maiden, what is her name, and what are the circumstances where the boundaries between life and death might thin to allow for communication?
 

I think this text lends itself beautifully to unusual fanwork formats, so if that’s your thing, definitely get hold of a copy!  You could potentially go for some in-universe meta here (people much brighter than me have pointed out that part of the poem reads like a lapidary). For art, you could try out something like a medieval illumination, or an illustration in the style of a stained glass window - or calligraphy of a passage you particularly like.  If you’re into the idea of Middle-earth crossovers, there’s plenty of pearl imagery in the legendarium to provide you with links, from Alqualondë to the Sleeper in the Tower of Pearl (some online scholars have even found connections between the narrator and Gollum!)
 

 

Where can I get this?  Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, together with Pearl and Sir Orfeo was first published in 1975, so there are several editions available – try your preferred bookshop, online retailer, or public library.  The 1975 edition is available as a PDF on the Internet Archive.  There is also a free copy of Tolkien's translation on Allpoetry.com.

 

What fanworks already exist?  None that I could find!  You could be first!