ABSTRACT
The Pearl was written in the northern part of the West Midlands. Other works attributed to the same author because of similarities in dialect and style are Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (p. 376, below). Like The Romance of the Rose, with which the author shows acquaintance, the poem is a dream vision. Its seriousness of tone, however, recalls Dante’s Divine Comedy, and its imagery is largely drawn from the Book of Revelation. Literally, the pearl in the poem is the poet’s infant daughter, who died before reaching her second year. Like Dante’s Beatrice, she not only reveals to the poet her blissful state in heaven but also corrects his human misunderstanding of the divine plan. Whether the poet, like Dante, intends other allegorical levels of meaning has been widely but inconclusively debated, but the pearl, or margery, is also the pearl (margarita) of great price that in Matthew xiii.45–46 is an analogue of the Kingdom of Heaven.
