Medieval
Gawain Poet
Known also as the Pearl Poet, this anonymous author wrote in a north-west Midlands dialect of Middle English in the late fourteenth century, a contemporary of Chaucer working in a very different, alliterative tradition.
Four poems in a single surviving manuscript (British Library, Cotton Nero A.x) are usually attributed to this one poet on grounds of dialect, style, and shared concerns: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness (also called Purity). Nothing certain is known of the poet's identity.
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, the best known of the four, is a chivalric romance and moral test of a Round Table knight, told with intricate structure and a rare sensitivity to the turning of the seasons.
Major Works (7)
- Cleanness — Alliterative homily, late 14th century
- Patience — Alliterative homily, late 14th century
- Pearl — translated by Sophie Jewett (1908)
- Pearl (Middle English text) — Dream vision, elegy, late 14th century
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight — translated by Jessie L. Weston (1898)
- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight — translated by Jessie L. Weston (1912)
- Sir Gawayne and the Grene Knyȝt (Middle English text) — Alliterative romance, late 14th century