Personified Gemstone
A New Interpretation of the Pearl Maiden
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21389970 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Barbara Kowalik (0000-0001-6479-2164, University of Warsaw, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 73 |
| Issue | 11 |
| Pages | 91-103 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-19 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Roczniki Humanistyczne (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0035-7707 • E-ISSN: 2544-5200 |
| Publisher | Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL (PUBLISHER • PL) |
| DOI | 10.18290/rh257311.6 |
| OpenAlex | W7116837538 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 14 |
This paper reinterprets the central character of the Middle English dream poem Pearl, the Pearl Maiden, observing that she is nearly as bewilderingly elusive and multifaceted a figure as the green challenger of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, another famous poem attributed to the same unknown fourteenth-century author. The paper’s argument draws upon the pre-modern perception of gemstones as animate beings and on modern thing theory as developed by Bill Brown. I argue that, before the Maiden begins to speak in the dream-vision, correcting the Dreamer’s errors and false assumptions and revealing her status of a heavenly queen, the poem underscores her identity as a precious stone, confronting the Dreamer, and the reader, with an intriguing gemstone persona, a marvel of the Terrestrial Paradise. The poem’s allegory rests, therefore, not exactly on a jewel or a human child at the literal level of allegorical exegesis but, more precisely, on the fluid image of a half human, half lithic figure. The paper demonstrates that the modern conceptual network of binaries like human–nonhuman, human–lithic, or animate–vegetative might not be commensurable with the typically more labile pre-modern perception of things and objects
Allegory · Argument (complex analysis) · Character (mathematics) · Exegesis · Identity (music) · Interpretation (philosophy) · Pearl · Poetry · Archaeology and Rock Art Studies · Historical, Religious, and Philosophical Studies · Medieval Literature and History
| Highly cited | No |
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