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fauxpunk's review
5.0
I originally had to pick this up for class, but recently read the rest of the poems on my own. It's a fascinating look into the Medieval mind, and the essays and footnotes by Marie Borroff are insightful and engaging.
These poems are often strange, but I cannot help but be captivated by them. The Gawain Poet (whoever he was) was a genius....it shows in his allusions and in his words. The poems themselves run from the complex and heavily theological Pearl, to the simpler but no less moving Saint Erkenwald. The Gawain legend is well-known, and rendered with humor, warmth, and wisdom. Patience and Cleaness are more remote and perhaps less emotionally available to the modern reader. They tackle Old Testament stories (Jonah, the Noahic Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Writing on the Wall), tied together with a homiletic message. Even with these, the passion, pathos, and great intelligence of the Poet shine through the obscurity of the verse.
We will never know who he was, but at least we can know his art.
These poems are often strange, but I cannot help but be captivated by them. The Gawain Poet (whoever he was) was a genius....it shows in his allusions and in his words. The poems themselves run from the complex and heavily theological Pearl, to the simpler but no less moving Saint Erkenwald. The Gawain legend is well-known, and rendered with humor, warmth, and wisdom. Patience and Cleaness are more remote and perhaps less emotionally available to the modern reader. They tackle Old Testament stories (Jonah, the Noahic Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the Writing on the Wall), tied together with a homiletic message. Even with these, the passion, pathos, and great intelligence of the Poet shine through the obscurity of the verse.
We will never know who he was, but at least we can know his art.
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