Talk:Gawain Poet
Page contents not supported in other languages.
 | This level-5 vital article is ratedStart-class on Wikipedia'scontent assessment scale.It is of interest to the followingWikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
But WHY is he called The Pearl Poet? If anyone knows...I'd like to know.
He is also called the Pearl Poet because each of the poems features pearls in some form, and he talks a lot about purity (defined very broadly). I've edited to reflect this.Evkharper (talk)02:03, 29 February 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It would be great if this article discussed his unique style and gave some of the specifics that unite the poems. He's at least as skillful a poet as Chaucer, and some prefer him, so, despite not knowing any specifics of his biography, wecan talk about his dialect (which is unusually not far from Chaucer's) and the dates of composition, and the manuscript details of Cotton Nero a x, and his prosody.Geogre20:43, 25 October 2005 (UTC)[reply]
It is possible that we have a hint in the use of Old Norse that this is the child of an Earl - i.e. (in a hybrid of Welsh and the Norse derived English title) ap Earl - though, this is more likely to be the object of the poem rather than its author. Pearls were so precious that their ownership for display was restricted to the high nobility, though commoners might harvest them and merchants exchange them. It seems unlikely, therefore, that anyone but a noble would know or care much about them as objects of beauty.
210.50.17.16208:13, 16 November 2006 (UTC) Ian Ison[reply]
I'm not sure I understand this comment. 'Pearl' refers to the human subject of the poem 'Pearl', which also references a large number of other gems which would not have been in common use. The imagery of the poem draws heavily from the book of Revelation in the Bible, which describes the twelve gates being made of pearls. In any case, 'Earl' is not Old Norse - which would be Jarl - but Old English 'eorl'.Martin Turner00:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Could the Pearl Poet have been a woman? The poet was obviously Christian. We nothing of this mysterious person except by their poems. And the poet is not remembered to this day. The tone ofSir Gawain sounds distinctly female. All these reasons seem to have me convinced that the poet was an educated woman who could not be properly accredited for her work. What do the rest of you think?—Precedingunsigned comment added byWorking for Him (talk •contribs)21:39, 31 August 2007 (UTC)[reply]
I came to this talk section to make a comment that the use of "him or her" seems ridiculous and, to me, utterly grating since it seems to suggest some "equal probability" that the poet might be a woman. A very unlikely proposition, indeed, at the time. I would much prefer to see the main text altered so that "him or her" is changed to "the poet."— Precedingunsigned comment added by108.212.92.200 (talk)18:11, 19 July 2014 (UTC)[reply]
To revert to the question and answer of 2005 -
a. The anonymous author of a poem is not uncommonly known as 'the[x] poet', where[x] is the title of the poem.
b. More interestingly, why is this article lodged under the title 'Pearl poet? The article itself makes it clear that the author of Pearl is commonly thought to be the author ofGawain and the Green Knight,Patience andPurity (orCleanliness). In my circles, (s)he is commonly referred to as 'theGawain poet' rather than 'thePearl poet'; and this article seems to approach agreement with this, in that there are the same number of mentions of 'Gawain poet' and 'Pearl poet'. One would expect the number using the article heading to outnumber the cross references. I suggest that the article be moved to 'Gawain poet', and that this become the link. I'll leave it to a more experienced Wikipedian to do the moving because of any knock-on effects or losses I might cause.
MacAuslan15:17, 21 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The answer is that some people don't like to use "Pearl Poet" because they don't want to be reminded about that wonderfully religious poem. They prefer Gawain because they think that poem isn't religious, which they are of course wrong about. And what's with this nonsense about the Pearl Poet possibly being a woman? Somebody above says that GGK reads like it was written by a woman? Ridiculous. Get out of here with your petty personal causes.—Precedingunsigned comment added by138.163.0.43 (talk)16:55, 4 August 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The first comment in this section is correct: one refers to the poet as the writer of whichever poem is under discussion, i.e. "the [x] poet" where [x] is the poem. In discussing the poet as the author of all the works in the manuscript (which may be the case) it is usual to refer to the Gawain Poet. This is accepted practice in literary studies, and should therefore also be the title of the article. In many years of English literary study, I have never heard anyone refer to the Pearl Poet where the author of the works taken together was intended, and to title the article in this way appears capricious. Perhaps it is someone's personal project to shift attention toward Pearl as a work. With regard to subsequent comments: religious content has nothing to do with it. Certainly both works are solidly Christian, as you would expect from what was a predominantly (if not exclusively, at that time) Christian country. The order of the poems in the manuscript is irrelevant. Sir Gawain is the best known because it is the most significant for the history of literature and therefore the most taught at undergraduate level. It is considered the best Middle English romance. It is also (for the record, and not that it particularly matters) twice as long as Pearl (twice as many lines). Without referring to Wikipedia's tedious supply of editorial policies (perhaps someone else could do that between Twinkies), I'd have thought that an encyclopedia, even a spurious populist one pretending to authoritativeness, should follow standard academic practice, rather than a supposed objectivity based on subjective principles.— Precedingunsigned comment added by212.74.97.205 (talk)15:48, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
I know nobody is looked at this in a long ass time, but I'm really confused by this article's insistence that "the Pearl Poet" is less common, because being in the medieval literary academy, I can count on one hand the number of times I've heard or read someone use "the Gawain Poet." "The Pearl Poet" is used almost exclusively.2600:1700:4A5D:5210:E5DE:4841:865D:826E (talk)00:40, 19 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Could anyone elaborate on this line in theJohn (or Hugh) Massey section?
"A later suggestion is John Massey of Cotton (a village mentioned in Gawain); this was first put forward by Nolan and Farley-Hills in 1971.[10]"
I have been attempting to corroborate this without success. I cannot find a village named Cotton inSir Gawain. Nor can I find any mention of it in Nolan's and Farley-Hills's 1971 article.
Was "Cotton" in this case possibly a typo for "Chester" or "Cheshire" (locations that do appear in the article, at least)? Apologies if I've simply been missing something obvious; any help will be greatly appreciated! --Mjkuhns (talk)22:06, 26 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I'm curious as to where this claim that "Pearl Poet" is less common is coming from. In my studies and my work as a medievalist, I could probably count on my fingers the number of scholars I've met who use "Gawain Poet" - and all of them are older academics. "Pearl Poet" has been the standard as long as I've been in the field. Even a quick search of the MLA International Bibliography turns up nearly equal results under both titles.— Precedingunsigned comment added by2600:1700:4A5D:5210:C5B0:EA2C:4FE7:1DBC (talk)00:27, 14 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]
