Pearl (poem)

Pearl (poem)

Pearl is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the "Pearl poet" or "Gawain poet", is generally assumed, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness or Purity and may have composed St. Erkenwald.

The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x, is in the British Library. The first publication was by the Early English Text Society (o.s. 1), edited by Richard Morris, in 1864, while a standard modern edition was edited by E. V. Gordon (Oxford, 1953). The most recent edition came out in 2007, edited by Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron with a prose translation on CD-ROM.