In recent years, poets such as Seamus Heaney and Lavinia Greenlaw have found inspiration in medieval English literature, translating Middle English poems into contemporary English or adapting their stories into new works. Simon Armitage has translated Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and published a Modern English version of the Alliterative Morte Arthur called The Death of King Arthur.
In the same medieval manuscript as the more famous Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are three other poems by the same poet: Pearl, Patience and Cleanness. While these last two poems narrate stories from the Bible, Pearl is a dream vision which is preoccupied by grief, loss and, most particularly, the difference between life on earth and life in heaven.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
