Text and Matter: New Critical Perspectives of the Pearl-Poet.

Assembled here are fifteen essays by American or Canadian scholars on the four poems in the Pearl manuscript: five on Pearl, three each on Purity and Patience, and four on Sir Gawain, varying in length from 7 pages (two essays) to 29 (also two essays). It is a volume seriously flawed in execution: an inserted card announces that 'the uncorrected proofs of several essays in this collection were printed without benefit of emendations made by their authors', and the reference to computers and Apple Scriven suggests that a number of contributors have suffered slipped disks. The most affected essay is reprinted as an accompanying offprint, and the editors promise to issue 'an errata section for future inclusion in this volume'. It will be interesting to see if it includes 'Complementing' for 'Complimenting', 'Carlisle' (Cathedral) for 'Carlyle', and, in a …