Mary, «Pearl», and Sir John Stanley (d. 1414)
Main Article Content
Abstract
Pearl is a Middle English dream-poem in London, British Library, ms Cotton Nero A.x, of about 1400. It is attributed to the same author as the scriptural poems Patience and Cleanness and the romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight also found in this manuscript. The four texts provide abundant information on fourteenth-century social life, including religion, particularly for devotion to the Blessed Virgin. Analysis of Marian imagery in Pearl and its related poems thus tells us much on the attitudes to Christ's mother of a high-ranking provincial layman of about 1390, especially for her as ‘Queen of Heaven’ and ‘Queen of Courtesy’, the latter term denoting the values of court society. Such analysis also tends to confirm attribution on other grounds of the four poems to Sir John Stanley (d. 1414), a magnate and courtier who in the last thirty years of his life dominated the politics of the Lancashire-Cheshire region of north-west England.
Keywords
References
Anderson, John J., Language and Imagination in the Gawain-Poems, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2005.
Barr, Helen, «Pearl, or the Jeweller's Tale», Medium Aevum, LXIX, 2000, pp. 59-79. https://doi.org/10.2307/43631490
Barrett, Robert W., Against All England: Regional Identity and Cheshire Writing, 1195-1656, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Bennett, Jack A. W., Middle English Literature, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1986.
Bishop, Ian, Pearl in Its Setting: A Critical Study of the Structure and Meaning of the Middle English Poem, Oxford, Basil Blackwell,1968.
Blanch, Robert J. and Julian N. Wasserman, From Pearl to Gawain: Forme to Fynisment, Gainesville, University Press of Florida, 1995.
Bowers, John M., «Pearl in its Royal Setting», Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVII, 1995, pp. 111-155. https://doi.org/10.1353/sac.1995.0006
Bowers, John M., The Politics of Pearl: Court Poetry in the Age of Richard II, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2001.
Breeze, Andrew, «Sir John Stanley (c. 1350-1414) and the Gawain-Poet», Arthuriana, XIV/1, 2004, pp. 15-30. https://doi.org/10.1353/art.2004.0032
Breeze, Andrew, «Pearl and the Plague of 1390-1393», Neophilologus, XCVIII, 2014, pp. 337-341. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11061-013-9376-y
Brewer, Derek S., «Courtesy and the Gawain-Poet», in Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis, ed. John Lawlor, London, Edward Arnold, 1966, pp. 54-85.
Brewer, Derek, English Gothic Literature, London, Macmillan, 1983. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-17037-1
Brown, Peter, Reading Chaucer: Selected Esssays, Oxford, Peter Lang, 2013.
Coleman, Janet, English Literature in History 1350-1400, London, Hutchinson, 1981.
Coley, David K., Death and the Pearl Maiden: Plague, Poetry, England, Columbus, The Ohio State University Press, 2019. https://doi.org/10.26818/9780814213902
Cooper, Helen, The English Romance in Time: Transforming Motifs from Geoffrey of Monmouth to the Death of Shakespeare, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004.
Coward, Barry, The Stanleys, Lords Stanley, and Earls of Derby 1385-1672, Manchester, Chetham Society by Manchester University Press,1983.
D'Arcy, Anne Marie, «'Written in Gold Upon a Purple Stain'», in Middle English Lyrics, ed. Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2018, pp. 109-121. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvc16hdd.15
Davenport, W. A., The Art of the Gawain-Poet, London, Athlone Press, 1978.
Everett, Dorothy, Essays on Middle English Literature, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1955.
Fisher, John H., «Wyclif, Langland, Gower, and the Pearl Poet on the Subject of Aristocracy», in Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor Albert Croll Baugh, ed. MacEdward Leach, Philadelphia, Uni-versity of Pennsylvania Press, 1961, pp. 139-157. https://doi.org/10.9783/9781512817508-009
Fowler, David C., The Bible in Middle English Literature, Seattle, University of Washington, 1984.
Gillespie, Vincent, «Foreword», in Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts, ed. Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde, Turnhout, Brepols, 2017, pp. XI-XVIII.
Gradon, Pamela, Form and Style in Early English Literature, London, Methuen, 1971.
Gray, Douglas, Themes and Images in the Medieval English Religious Lyric, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972.
Hill, Ordelle G., Looking Westward: Poetry, Landscape, and Politics in 'Sir Gawain and the Green Knight', Newark, University of Delaware Press, 2009.
Hirn, Yrjö, The Sacred Shrine: A Study of the Poetry and Art of the Catholic Church, London, Faber and Fa-ber,1958.
Kean, Patricia M., The Pearl: An Interpretation, London, Routledge, 1967.
Kowalik, Barbara, «Artistry and Christianity in Pearl», The Yearbook of Research in English and American Literature, IV, 1986, pp. 1-34. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783112321249-001
Kowalik, Barbara, Betwixt Engelaunde and Englene Londe: Dialogic Poetics in Early Religious Lyric, Berlin, Peter Lang, 2010. https://doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-00626-1
Loomis, Laura Hibbard, «Sir Gawain and the Green Knight», in Arthurian Literature in the Middle Ages, ed. Roger Sherman Loomis, Oxford, Clarendon, Press, 1959, pp. 528-540.
Mathew, Gervase, «Ideals of Knighthood in Late-Fourteenth-Century England», in Studies in Medieval History Presented to Frederick Maurice Powicke, ed. Richard William Hunt, W. A. Pantin and R. W. Southern, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1948, pp. 354-362.
Mathew, Gervase, The Court of Richard II, London, John Murray,1968.
McFarlane, K. B., Lancastrian Kings and Lollard Knights, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1972.
Medcalf, Stephen, «Piers Plowman and the Ricardian Age in Literature», in The Mediaeval World, ed. David Daiches and Anthony Thorlby, London, Aldus Books, 1973, pp. 643-696.
Muscatine, Charles, Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 1972.
Oakden, James P., Alliterative Poetry in Middle English: A Survey of the Traditions, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1935.
Oakden, James P., «The Liturgical Influence in Pearl», in Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposium für Walter F. Schirmer, ed. Arno Esch, Tübingen, Max Neimeyer, 1968, pp. 337-353. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110952766-017
Patience, ed. J. J. Anderson, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1969.
Patterson, Lee, Acts of Recognition: Essays on Medieval Culture, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
Pearl, ed. Eric Valentine Gordon, Oxford, Clarendon Press,1953.
Pearsall, D. A., «Courtesy and Chivalry», in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, ed. Derek Brewer and Jona-than Gibson, Cambridge, UK and Rochester,1997, pp. 351-362.
Pearsall, Derek A., Old English and Middle English Poetry, London, Routledge & Kegal Paul, 1977.
Putter, Ad, «Sir Gawain and the Green Knight» and French Arthurian Romance, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198182535.001.0001
Putter, Ad and Myra Stokes, «The Linguistic Atlas and the Dialect of the Gawain-Poems», Journal of English and Germanic Philology, CVI, 2007, pp. 468-491. https://doi.org/10.2307/27712689
Rhodes, Jim, «The Dreamer Redeemed», Studies in the Age of Chaucer, XVI, 1994, pp. 119-142. https://doi.org/10.1353/sac.1994.0005
Shepherd, Geoffrey, «The Nature of Alliterative Poetry in Late Medieval England», Proceedings of the British Academy, LVI, 1970, pp. 57-76.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. Israel Gollancz, London, Oxford University Press, 1940.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1967.
Sisam, Kenneth (ed.), Fourteenth-Century Verse and Prose, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1921. https://doi.org/10.1093/actrade/9780198113911.book.1
Spearing, Anthony Colin, «Symbolic and Dramatic Development in Pearl», in Sir Gawain and Pearl: Critical Essays, ed. Robert J. Blanch, Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1966, pp. 98-119.
Spearing, Anthony Colin, The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1970.
Spearing, Anthony Colin, Criticism and Medieval Poetry, London, Edward Arnold, 1972.
Spearing, Anthony Colin, Medieval Dream-Poetry, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Spearing, Anthony Colin, Readings in Medieval Poetry, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1987.
Spearing, Anthony Colin, Textual Subjectivity: The Encoding of Subjectivity in Medieval Narratives and Lyrics, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198187240.001.0001
Spyra, Piotr, «The Discourse of Fairyland», in The Light of Life: Essays in Honour of Professor Barbara Kowalik, ed. Maria M. Błaszkiewicz and Łukasz Neubauer, Kraków, Wydawnictwo Libron - Filip Lohner, 2017, pp. 93-108.
The Pearl, ed. Mary Vincent Hillman, Notre Dame, College of Sain Elizabeth Press,1961.
The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, Pearl Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. A Prose Transla-tion, ed. Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, London, Edward Arnold, 1978.
The Works of the Gawain Poet, ed. Ad Putter and Myra Stokes, London, Penguin Classics, 2014.
Turville-Petre, Thorlac, The Alliterative Revival, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1977.
Turville-Petre, Thorlac, «The Green Chapel», in A Commodity of Good Names: Essays in Honour of Margaret Gelling, ed. O. J. Padel and David N. Parsons, Donnington, Shaun Tyas, 2008, pp. 320-329.
Turville-Petre, Thorlac, «Places of the Imagination», in The Oxford Handbook of Medieval English Literature, ed. Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2010, pp. 594-608. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199229123.013.0031
Vance, Eugene, «Pearl: Love and the Poetics of Participation», in Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature, ed. Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1991, pp. 131-147.
Vantuono, William, «Patience, Cleanness, Pearl, and Gawain: The Case for Common Authorship», Annuale Mediaevale, XII, 1971, pp. 37-69.
Wadiak, Walter, Savage Economy: The Returns of Middle English Romance, Notre Dame, University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctvpj7c1h
Watkins, John, «'Sygeley in Synglure': Pearl and Late Medieval Individualism», Chaucer Yearbook, 2, 1995, pp. 117-136.
Watson, Nicholas, «Christian Ideologies», in A Companion to Chaucer, ed. Peter Brown, Oxford, Blackwell, 2000, pp. 75-89. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470693469.ch5
Wells, J. E., A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1916.
Woolf, Rosemary, The English Religious Lyric in the Middle Ages, Oxford, Clarendon Press,1968.
Details
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
RIGHTS TRANSFER
By submitting the article for evaluation and subsequent publication in Memoria y Civilización, the AUTHOR exclusively assigns the rights of public communication, reproduction, distribution and sale for commercial exploitation to the University of Navarra through its Publications Service, for the maximum legal term in force -the entire life of the author and seventy years after his death or declaration of death-, in any country, and in any of the current and future edition modalities, both in print and electronic versions.
In the event that the article is not accepted for publication , this transfer of rights lapses with the communication of the refusal to the AUTHOR.
The AUTHOR affirms that the article is unpublished, that it has not been sent simultaneously to another publication medium and that the rights have not been transferred exclusively previously. He is responsible to the University of Navarra through its Publications Service for the authorship and originality of his work, as well as for all pecuniary charges that may arise for the University of Navarra through its Publications Service, in favor of third parties due to actions, claims or conflicts arising from the breach of obligations by the AUTHOR.