Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight
Autor Arthur Bahren Limba Engleză Hardback – 27 mar 2025
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.
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Specificații
ISBN-13: 9780226835358
ISBN-10: 0226835359
Pagini: 240
Ilustrații: 26 color plates, 20 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 32 mm
Greutate: 0.79 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
ISBN-10: 0226835359
Pagini: 240
Ilustrații: 26 color plates, 20 halftones
Dimensiuni: 152 x 229 x 32 mm
Greutate: 0.79 kg
Ediția:First Edition
Editura: University of Chicago Press
Colecția University of Chicago Press
Notă biografică
Arthur Bahr is professor of literature and MacVicar Faculty Fellow 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.
Cuprins
Introduction
One In Praise of Speculation
Two The Expanding Singularity of Pearl
Three Layers of Time
Four Shaping Delight in Cleanness
Five (Mid)Points of Interest
Six Touching Patience
Seven Speculative Geometry
Eight Chasing Sir Gawain’s Endless Knot
Final Reflections: The Pearl-Manuscript as Broken Kaleidoscope
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
One In Praise of Speculation
Two The Expanding Singularity of Pearl
Three Layers of Time
Four Shaping Delight in Cleanness
Five (Mid)Points of Interest
Six Touching Patience
Seven Speculative Geometry
Eight Chasing Sir Gawain’s Endless Knot
Final Reflections: The Pearl-Manuscript as Broken Kaleidoscope
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Index
Recenzii
“A helpful and thought-provoking model for reading medieval texts, given how little contextual information we often have for them. With respect to the Pearl manuscript, Bahr’s project is not to pin down its meaning, but to unfold the near-infinite possible meanings it seems to contain. . . . A study that is as compelling in its argument as it is bewildering in its seemingly insatiable attention to detail.”
"There is no getting around the weirdness [of the Pearl Manuscript]. We don’t really know what it is or what it was for. In his new study of the manuscript, Arthur Bahr embraces the mystery, spiritedly chasing after a book that will never let us catch up. . . Against the pseudo-certainties of historicism, Bahr’s speculative readings are compelling precisely because they admit the essential mystery of the manuscript, rather than trying to explain it away."
"Sophisticated."
“Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript elegantly explores the power of speculation and delight in the singular copy of some of the most beautiful medieval poetry that exists. Although manuscript study sometimes trades in empirical satisfactions, Bahr provides a salutary reminder that literary texts traffic in deliberate and artful impediments to solid knowledge. Exploring both what can be known about material texts and also what can be imagined, Bahr offers an adventurous multilayered reading of both text and book and provides an important reinterpretation of the codex and its poems.”
“Like the hunters of the fleshly and the ineffable in the Pearl-poems themselves, Bahr tracks physical writing through the manuscript, down to movements of the pen or pointing hands (richly illustrated here). He thereby sets out an authoritative reading of these poems and, by reflecting on the value of speculating, a bold model for studying material texts and literary works together.”
“Intricate, passionate, continually surprising, and beautifully written, Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript is at once a brilliant successor to Bahr’s first book, Fragments and Assemblages, and a wondering tribute to a wondrous manuscript.”