Comments by Distinguished Guest Amit Majmudar:
Wonderful selection--I have been consistently delighted when submitters have taken advantage of our any-time-period allowance.
Such a tragically high rate of infant and child mortality in the past--I have no idea why that wasn't more of a topic for writers throughout history. At the Met recently I saw a lot of Hellenistic funerary art for little children.
I suspect parents in the past looked at birth and the first years of a child's life differently than we do today. We just assume a child's going to live, unless there's a distinct, fatal diagnosis given. For people in medieval times, it must have been a toss-up whether any given kid was going to make it.
Interesting that Pearl falls from him. Not the first dad to worry about dropping the baby.
Interesting triple potential meaning of "gresse." Greasiness is the least appealing of the three readings; grace, the least likely psychologically, in my opinion. At that point in the poem, he is still grieving, first articulating his grief. The reconciliation happens at the end. Unless he is foreshadowing. If he is, it's an odd thing to foreshadow right then, at that moment.
I agree that Pearl is underrated. Medieval poems tend to get underrated these days, perhaps because of their overtly religious content. (Although religious discourse doesn't turn people off Dante, so maybe that's a bogus theory. Unless everyone is skipping the versified Aquinas, the way I do....)
Has anyone here read Wolfram von Eschenbach's PARZIVAL? Now there is a medieval poem that should get more press.
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