PEARL, THE. — An allegorical poem in alliterative verse, anonymous, composed in the second half of the 14th century and included in the same manuscript that contains the famous Arthurian lay of Sir Gacain and the
green knight, for which reason it is supposed that the author is the same.
P. is the author’s daughter, who died as a small child and appears to him, grown mature, wise, and blessed in Paradise. She describes to him the happiness of her state and urges him to cease mourning her. He sees her beyond a river and attempts to reach her, but the vision vanishes, and the poet awakens in the cemetery, nevertheless resigned to his grief. The little poem ranks among the finest medieval English allegories and recalls the final cantos of Dante’s Purgatorio.