Description: Close analysis of the poem reveals extensive allusion to contemporary social, religious and political events.
Review Quotes: Restores this literary gem to its contemporary historical setting, successfully locating it in and among the religious and cultural debates of the Ricardian court in the mid-1390s...has done the poet and his readers a considerable service in at last affording Pearl the kind of detailed and sustained historicist scrutiny that has previously been afforded only to its more overtly worldly companion-pieces.-- "ENGLISH HISTORICAL REVIEW"