Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript - by Arthur Bahr (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In this book, Arthur Bahr takes a fresh look at a much-studied, unique object in English literature: the four poems and many illustrations contained in the so-called "Pearl-Manuscript" (British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x/2). These poems have been the subject of much scholarship, especially Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, two of the most well-known and -read poems from the English Middle Ages. Here Bahr attempts the first analysis of the poems and material object together. He explores how the physical manuscript itself--its composition and compilation, its intersecting aesthetic effects across linguistic and visual lines--enhances our perception of the poetry. Bahr reads Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight through the lens of their unique, material incarnation in this singular object, taking advantage of recent technological advances (e.g., spectroscopic analysis and digital facsimiles) to show the Pearl-Manuscript to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previous scholarship has allowed. Combining technology, literary close reading, and visual analysis, he connects the manuscript's material construction to the intricately wrought shapes, themes, and textual beauties evoked in the poetry to suggest new ways to understand what the poems are and do"--Provided by publisher.

Book Synopsis

A unique study of the only physical manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as both a material and literary object.

In this book, Arthur Bahr takes a fresh look at the four poems and twelve illustrations of the so-called "Pearl-Manuscript," the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript, Bahr explores how the physical manuscript itself enhances our perception of the poetry, drawing on recent technological advances (such as spectroscopic analysis) to show the Pearl-Manuscript to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previously understood. By connecting the manuscript's construction to the intricate language in the texts, Bahr suggests new ways to understand both what poetry is and what poetry can do.

Review Quotes

"There is no getting around the weirdness [of the Pearl Manuscript]. We don't really know what it is or what it was for. In his new study of the manuscript, Arthur Bahr embraces the mystery, spiritedly chasing after a book that will never let us catch up. . . Against the pseudo-certainties of historicism, Bahr's speculative readings are compelling precisely because they admit the essential mystery of the manuscript, rather than trying to explain it away."-- "London Review of Books"

"A helpful and thought-provoking model for reading medieval texts, given how little contextual information we often have for them. With respect to the Pearl manuscript, Bahr's project is not to pin down its meaning, but to unfold the near-infinite possible meanings it seems to contain. . . . A study that is as compelling in its argument as it is bewildering in its seemingly insatiable attention to detail."-- "Times Literary Supplement"

"Sophisticated."-- "Publishers Weekly"

"Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript elegantly explores the power of speculation and delight in the singular copy of some of the most beautiful medieval poetry that exists. Although manuscript study sometimes trades in empirical satisfactions, Bahr provides a salutary reminder that literary texts traffic in deliberate and artful impediments to solid knowledge. Exploring both what can be known about material texts and also what can be imagined, Bahr offers an adventurous multilayered reading of both text and book and provides an important reinterpretation of the codex and its poems."--Jessica Brantley, Yale University

"Intricate, passionate, continually surprising, and beautifully written, Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript is at once a brilliant successor to Bahr's first book, Fragments and Assemblages, and a wondering tribute to a wondrous manuscript."--Nicholas Watson, Harvard University

"Like the hunters of the fleshly and the ineffable in the Pearl-poems themselves, Bahr tracks physical writing through the manuscript, down to movements of the pen or pointing hands (richly illustrated here). He thereby sets out an authoritative reading of these poems and, by reflecting on the value of speculating, a bold model for studying material texts and literary works together."--Daniel Wakelin, University of Oxford

About the Author

Arthur Bahr is associate professor of literature and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London, also published by the University of Chicago Press.