ABSTRACT
Comprising scenes of instruction in which the Pearl-maiden brings the Pearl dreamer to a new understanding of loss and salvation, the text of Pearl additionally provides a self-reflexive commentary on the processes of the figurative language used to motivate and sustain its discourse. As the two characters progress through a sequence of rhetorical registers,2 their dialogue is framed by the gender-specific implications of the figurative language used to invoke and to annotate specific points of debate within the series of discursive engagements. Although Pearl can hardly be described as a proto-feminist treatise, it nonetheless displays an insightful sensitivity to gender-specific nuances of the medieval dyad of language and religion. How gender informs a transgressive construction of figurative language in Pearl is the focus of my analysis, particularly as that construction calls attention to a valorization of the "feminine."
