Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight

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.

Arthur Bahr is associate professor of literature 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.