Pearl: A New Verse Translation

One of our most ingenious interpreters of Middle English, Oxford Professor of Poetry Simon Armitage is celebrated for his “compulsively readable” translations ( ). A perfect complement to his historic translation of reanimates another beloved Medieval English masterpiece thought to be by the same anonymous author and housed in the same original fourteenth-century manuscript. Honoring the rhythms and alliterative music of the original, Armitage’s virtuosic translation describes a man mourning the loss of his Pearl—something that has “slipped away.” What follows is a tense, fascinating, and tender dialogue weaving through the throes of grief toward divine redemption. Intricate and endlessly connected, Armitage’s lyrical translation is a circular and perfected whole, much like the pearl itself.