Arthur Bahr offers a unique study of the only physical manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, exploring it as both a material and literary object. In this book, Bahr takes a fresh look at the four poems and twelve illustrations of the so-called “Pearl-Manuscript,” the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript, Bahr explores how the physical manuscript itself enhances our perception of the poetry, drawing on recent technological advances (such as spectroscopic analysis) to show the Pearl-Manuscript to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previously understood. By connecting the manuscript’s construction to the intricate language in the texts, Bahr suggests new ways to understand both what poetry is and what poetry can do.

About the Speaker

Arthur Bahr is professor of literature and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His first book, Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London (University of Chicago Press, 2013), showed how medieval manuscripts were often artfully sequenced and laid out so as to enhance the literary potential of the compilation as a whole. His new book, Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight (University of Chicago Press, 2025), applies those insights to the only surviving copy of four extraordinary Middle English poems: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and (most famously) Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.