POET AND DREAMER IN PEARL: “HYS RYCHE TO WYNNE” F R A N C E S F A S T University of Winnipeg T h e dreamer in the Middle English poem Pearl is admittedly a bit of a fool, and the fact gives him much trouble. But the poet is no fool. He has aptly been described as a “man drunk with words” (Muscatine 46), although at the same time the precision of the poem’s structure, with its profusion of sym bolic detail, indicates a poet who is entirely in control of his art. This poet’s relationship to his creation, particularly his persona, is intriguing. Unlike his contemporaries Chaucer and Langland he never overtly inserts himself into his work; he names no names, except metaphorically — the dreamer is a jeweller (Burrow, Writers 43-46). Although there is, as J.A. Burrow says, “the possibility (or rather probability) that the poem refers to a real event in the poet’s life, the death of an infant daughter” ( Writers 20), this poet is not simply a self-conscious autobiographer. In the first place, the con tent of the dreamer’s vision is largely based on the poet’s primary authority, Scripture and the tradition of Scriptural interpretation, and the poem is shaped according to the literary milieu of dream-vision poetry (Spearing, Poetry 1-47). Further, as to methods and impetus for composing, Geoffrey Shepherd suggests that Pearl is a part of the alliterative tradition in Middle English in which the poet uses the process of poetics to clarify for himself and his audience the meaning of elusive moments of vision (191). Anna Torti, with particular reference to Pearl, further suggests that to a large extent the meaning of this poem lies in the human inability to comprehend or express the heavenly. The dreamer typifies that inability; the maiden represents the heavenly, perfected perspective. The poet in his exploration begins to describe the process of his composing. Torti says that with respect to his persona this poet is “self-ironic” (56). Similarly, Burrows says that a deficient persona who is closely associated with the poet himself is typi cal of fourteenth-century English poetry. He goes on: “The term eiron in Aristotle’s Ethics means a self-depreciating man; and its derivative irony, as Northrop Frye says, ‘indicates a technique of appearing to be less than one is.’ Irony in this sense is highly characteristic of the Ricardian poet” (Poetry 39). The poet of Pearl utilizes this irony fully. This poet, if indeed he had a vision, is concerned with the meaning of that vision. As C.S. Lewis reminds us, the medieval poet was above all E n g l i s h S t u d i e s in C a n a d a , x v i i i , 4, December 1992 else concerned with the truth of what he was saying: the poet’s aim is “not self-expression or ‘creation’; it is to hand on the ‘historical’ matter worthily; not worthily of . . . [his] own genius or of the poetic art but of the matter itself’ (211). Burrow, further, cites Pearl as an example of the most pointed didacticism in the literature of its period ( Writers 20-23). I suggest that to understand who this poet is the reader must first of all pay close attention precisely to what the poet believes to be true, to his matter. The deficiency of the narrator, the character Rosalind Field calls “not-very-sanctified” (7), and “fallacious and faltering” (9), is a particuarly significant factor in coming to an understanding of the poet’s matter. The foolish dreamer does not function as an example of what not to be; rather, his deficiency is essential to the dogma of the poem. The poet may not be saying anything new, but in the conviction of his matter, expressed largely through his persona, he “gives himself away.” The dreamer’s deficiency is immediately exposed in that the one who takes on the role of mentor and teacher is not only the original cause of his pain, but a child over whom he by right has authority, probably his dead infant...
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Dec 1, 1997
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