Pearl Manuscript

It has been described as "one of the greatest manuscript treasures for medieval literature", and "the most famous of all romance manuscripts".

• Name — Pearl Manuscript • Location — British Library • Also Known As — The Gawain Manuscript, British Library MS Cotton Nero A X/2 • Date — c. 1400 • Place Of Origin — Northern England • Language S — Middle English • Author S — The Gawain Poet • Material — Vellum • Size — 12 cm x 17 cm • Format — Single column • Script — Gothic textura rotunda • Contents — Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience • Previously Kept — Cotton library

The titles given here are those used by modern editors, all the poems being untitled in the manuscript. It has been foliated twice, first in ink and later in pencil; the second foliation is used here. • Pearl, ff. 41 r –59 v • Cleanness (also known as Purity), ff. 60 r –86 r • Patience, ff. 86 r –94 r • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ff. 94 v –130 r • A Middle English couplet beginning "Mi minde is mukul on on þat wil me noȝt amende", f. 129 v There are also a number of illustrations scattered throughout.

• Illustration — The tempting of Sir Gawain by Bertilak's wife, folio 129 r The text of the Pearl Manuscript is commonly dated on palaeographical grounds to the last quarter of the 14th century, or at the latest to the beginning of the 15th century, the illustrations being added at either the same time as the text or a little later. It has also been argued that it was produced for the Stanley family by a scribe whose dialect locates him to south-east Cheshire or north-east Staffordshire. In recent years several scholars have reidentified the scribe's dialect as Yorkshire, and Joel Fredell has pointed out stylistic and thematic similarities with illuminated manuscripts produced in York which suggest that the illustrations in Cotton Nero A X/2 were drawn and painted there in the first two decades of the 15th century.

It is not known who owned the manuscript for the first two hundred years of its history. The name "Hugo de" appears on the margin of one leaf, and perhaps (though this is disputed) "J Macy" on another, either of which might be interpreted as a mark of either ownership or authorship. Edward Wilson has speculated that it was held by the Stanley family; Elizabeth Salter that it formed part of the library of one Yorkshire monastery or another, and passed from them to the 16th-century collector John Nettleton. The recorded history of the manuscript begins some time before 1614 with a description of it in the private library catalogue of the Yorkshire book-collector Henry Savile of Banke as "An owld booke in English verse beginninge Perle plesant to Princes pay in 4º. Limned". Before 1621 it was evidently acquired by Sir Robert Cotton, being then listed as "Gesta Arthuri regis et aliorum versu Anglico [Deeds of King Arthur and other matters in English verse]". His librarian bound it along with two quite unrelated Latin texts, from which it was not separated until a rebinding in 1964. A catalogue of Cotton's collection printed in 1696 mentioned this volume, and it was, along with all the Cotton family's other manuscripts, donated to the British Museum when that institution was founded in 1753. It is now held by the British Library.

The first published quotations from Cotton Nero A X/2 appeared in a footnote in the third volume of Thomas Warton's History of English Poetry in 1781, comprising twelve lines from Pearl and four from Cleanness. A further short quotation from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was included in a footnote to Richard Price's new edition of Warton's History in 1824, and the poem was published in its entirety, edited by Frederic Madden, in 1839. Pearl, Patience and Cleanness were not edited until 1864, by Richard Morris.

Translations of the full contents: * *

• Illustration — The dreamer sees the maiden, folio 42 r. The Pearl manuscript's scribe was not the author of the poems it contains, and indeed the number and nature of its scribal errors and textual anomalies show it to stand at some distance from the original manuscript or manuscripts. At least one line, and possibly several more, have been lost from the original poems, while others seem to have been rearranged or added. It may have been an inept copy of a prestige illuminated manuscript commissioned by some wealthy patron. It has also been suggested that the Pearl manuscript or its exemplar may have collected each of its four texts from a different manuscript.

Editions of the full contents: * * * •. In two volumes. • This is considered the reference edition.