Pearl

Abstract

Pearl is a late fourteenth‐century elegiac dream vision, composed in an intricate stanza form in strongly alliterated verse, drawing on a range of secular and religious sources, but particularly the Bible. It survives solely in the same manuscript as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight . Exploring the full range of figurative associations of the pearl, the poem begins as allegory, then moves into an elegy for an infant daughter, eventually leading to a vision of heaven. The narrator's dream takes him into a dazzling bejewelled landscape where he encounters his lost daughter. The child appears in the vision as an adult woman, engaging her father in lengthy theological debate regarding salvation, which culminates in a vision of the heavenly city of Jerusalem, with Christ enthroned. The dream ends when the father attempts to rejoin his daughter, and he wakes to a renewed acceptance of God's will.