"This is a book about a book: the small, cropped, somewhat ragged but brightly illustrated volume now known formally, and rather forbiddingly, as British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x/2. The fame and beauty of its four Middle English poems have given it sobriquets beyond the shelfmark, however, which are more familiar and intimate: it is also the Gawain-Manuscript or, as I will call it, the Pearl-Manuscript."
"This highly regarded book will appeal to two groups of medievalists: those interested in late medieval literature and those focused on medieval manuscripts. Readers in both camps will come away with a deeper appreciation of the other field. "In his new study of the manuscript, Arthur Bahr embraces the mystery, spiritedly chasing after a book that will never let us catch up."
British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x/2, known as the Pearl-Manuscript, contains the sole surviving copies of Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The manuscript's small, cropped format, ragged edges, and bright illustrations shape how the poems are read and understood. The compilation binds the poems' literary identity to material features, linking linguistic, visual, and codicological elements. The manuscript's design appears pedagogical, provoking reflection on limits and possibilities of meaning-making. Attention to the manuscript's intersecting aesthetic effects deepens appreciation of the poems' beauty and expands ideas about medieval book production.
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