Who is the Pearl-poet? How do ideas about his life and interpretations of his poems shape our understanding of his work in late-medieval England-and beyond? In Becoming the Pearl-Poet: Perceptions, Connections, Receptions, readers can explore the world of this extraordinary, fourteenth-century writer. In Part I, "Perceptions," five scholars give insightful literary analyses of the narrative poems attributed to the poet: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and St. Erkenwald. In Part II, "Connections," six scholars examine connections between these diverse poems, focusing on authorship, ecology, material culture, sartorial adornment, shields, and the poet's pastoral theology. In Part III, "Receptions," scholars consider the illustrations of the Pearl Manuscript (British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x), the poet's cultural situatedness in the Northwest Midlands and Ricardian court, his religious contexts, later translations and paraphrases of his work, and his medieval and modern audiences. Intended for students and scholars alike, this book encourages readers to gain a deeper understanding of the Pearl-poet and his world, learning many new things and enjoying old things in a new way.

New studies of the problem of medieval masculinity, and Chaucer's treatment of it. Issues relating to the male characters and the construction of masculinities in Chaucer's masterpiece of love found and love lost are explored here. Collectively the essays address the question of what it means to be a man in theMiddle Ages, what constitutes masculinity in this era, and how such masculinities are culturally constructed; they seek to advance scholarly understanding of the themes, characters, and actions of Troilus and Criseyde through thehermeneutics of medieval and modern concepts of manliness. Throughout, they argue that Troilus and the other characters, including Criseyde, are subject to multiple and conflicting interpretations, especially in regard to the intersections of their genders with their sexual performances and their conflicted relationships to generic expectations for gendered conduct. Contributors: JOHN M. BOWERS, MICHAEL CALABRESE, HOLLY A. CROCKER, KATE KOPPELMAN,MOLLY MARTIN, MARCIA SMITH MARZEC, GRETCHEN MIESZKOWSKI, JAMES J. PAXSON, TISON PUGH, R. ALLEN SHOAF, ROBERT S. STURGES, ANGELA JANE WEISL, RICHARD ZEIKOWITZ

Close analysis of the poem reveals extensive allusion to contemporary social, religious and political events. This is an entirely new and original reading of Pearl, placing the anonymous masterpiece in the context of the Cheshire coterie that flourished at the court of Richard II during the 1390s. The brilliance of its poetic construction has long been acknowledged, but here Pearl is also shown to engage with the social, religious and political events of the late fourteenth century. The poem's defense of infant baptism is seen as countering Lollardcriticism of the sacraments, its retelling of the Parable of the Vineyard as offering scriptural support to the aims of the Statute of Labourers. The poem's dazzling representation of aristocratic magnificence - jewelled crowns, gem-embroidered gowns, livery badges, civic processions, and monumental architecture - studied in this context, relates to the spectacular royal culture of one of England's most ambitious monarchs. The courtly elegy offered consolation after the death of Anne of Bohemia, while its vision of a royal child-bride figured in the intense national debate over the king's prospective marriage to the six-year-old Isabelle of France. Richard II's fall from power brought to an end not simply Cheshire privilege, but also a poetic tradition that produced some of the finest works of English literature, most notably Pearl and Gawain and the Green Knight. Professor JOHN BOWERS teaches at the Department of English at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Tolkien's Lost Chaucer uncovers the story of an unpublished and previously unknown book by the author of The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien worked between 1922 and 1928 on his Clarendon edition Selections from Chaucer's Poetry and Prose, and though never completed, its 160 pages of commentary reveals much of his thinking about language and storytelling when he was still at the threshold of his career as an epoch-making writer of fantasy literature. Drawing upon other new materials such as his edition of the Reeve's Tale and his Oxford lectures on the Pardoner's Tale, this book reveals Chaucer as a major influence upon Tolkien's literary imagination.

In An Introduction to the Gawain Poet, John Bowers surveys an expanded selection of the works of Chaucer's anonymous contemporary, considering Sir Gawain and the Green Knight alongside the poet's lesser known but no less brilliant works. In addition to his succinct introductions and plot summaries, Bowers skillfully details the cultural, historical, political, and religious contexts for these works, synthesizing them with close reading of selected passages. Perhaps his most exciting contribution to the field is his choice to historicize the poet's life and works in the context of the royal culture of King Richard II, boldly contending that it was highly possible the Gawain Poet was a frequent visitor to Richard's court in London. The final chapter surveys the works influenced by, as well as the influences reflected in, the poet's work, from the Bible to The Lord of the Rings. The attention Bowers pays to the critical tradition that has developed around these texts over the past hundred years makes An Introduction to the Gawain Poet an ideal volume for both undergraduate students and scholars of the Gawain Poet. Bowers has marshaled his formidable skills to create a book impressive in its balanced combination of breadth and depth. John M. Bowers is professor of English at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and the author of five books, including Chaucer and Langland: The Antagonistic Tradition.

Although Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland together dominate fourteenth-century English literature, their respective masterpieces, The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, could not be more different. While Langland's poem was immediately popular and influential, it was Chaucer who stood at the head of a literary tradition within a generation of his death. John Bowers asks why and how Chaucer, not Langland, was granted this position. His study reveals the political, social, and religious factors that contributed to the formation of a literary canon in fourteenth-century England. Through extensive manuscript evidence, Bowers tracks the reputations of the two writers into the fifteenth century, when studies of fourteenth-century literature became more clearly configured in terms of a double, antagonistic dynamic. Langland remained the largely invisible presence against which the official Chaucerian tradition was constructed. Never really separate, the two literary traditions constantly interacted, with the reputation of Chaucer the court poet eclipsing that of Langland the dissenter and critic. By examining the historical and social contexts within which these traditions arose, Bowers helps us to understand how some texts and writers become canonical and how others become marginalized.