"Pearl" is one of the greatest English Medieval poems, a dream vision that is both a profoundly personal elegy for the dreamer's lost daughter and a subtle theological debate about the most difficult existential questions. In this parallel text edition the original poem is printed opposite a modernised version which retains all the formal features of the original - its elaborate musical schemes of alliteration and rhyme, and its rich vocabulary. Words unfamiliar to the contemporary reader are glossed alongside the modernisation so that the poem can easily be read by anybody not familiar with its idiom. In her introduction (almost the last piece of writing completed before her death) Kathleen Raine discusses the poem's celebration 'of all that the anima means and has meant throughout human history and as the inspiration of so much of the greatest poetry'.

About the Author
Victor Watts (1938-2002) was one of the country's leading authorities on English place-names, and a notable linguist. He taught Medieval Literature at Durham University, where he was also Master of Grey College. As honorary director of the English Place-Name Survey (from 1993), general editor of its survey volumes (from 1994), and editor of the Journal of the English Place-Name Society (from 1996) he enabled, assisted and oversaw the research of an entire scholarly community. His translation of Boethius's On the Consolation of Philosophy was published by Penguin Books and the Folio Society, and his Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, completed shortly before his death, was published in 2004.


Book Information
ISBN 9781904634201
Author Victor Watts
Format Paperback
Page Count 50
Imprint Enitharmon Press
Publisher Enitharmon Press