Patience (poem)
Encyclopedia
Patience is a Middle English
alliterative
poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the Pearl-Poet or Gawain-Poet, also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, Pearl
, and Cleanness
(all ca. 1360-1395) and may have composed St. Erkenwald
. This is thought to be true because the techniques and vocabulary of regional dialect of the unknown author is that of Northwest Midlands, located between Shropshire and Lancashire.
The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x
is in the British Museum
. The first published edition was in Early English Alliterative Poems in the West Midland Dialect of the fourteenth century, printed by the Early English Text Society
.
Of Patience, considered the slightest of the four poems, its only manifest source is the Vulgate Bible. It also resembles a Latin poem by Tertullian and Bishop Marbod. There are certain mannerisms found in Patience that Pearl does not have. For instance, both homilies clearly follow the same pattern: 1. statement of theme, 2. announcement of the text from the New Testament, 3. discussion of another passage from the New Testament in elucidation of that text, 4. and elaborate paraphrase of exemplum or exempla, from the Old Testament.
is used consistently throughout the poem, usually with three alliterating words per line. The very last line repeats the opening line of the poem, giving it a kind of cyclic feel. The unidentified narrator speaks in the first person throughout the work, posing as an autobiography.
which illustrates and justifies the admonition to accept the will of God patiently. Jonah's story delineates his own impatience because he could not handle the burden of what he was supposed to do--preach to the Ninevites.
Notably, patience is generally paired in opposition to sloth. Medieval schools of thought would have condemned sloth, portraying negative consequences of those who fall into sloth, which essentially, is what the poet is trying to convey. Jonah, although written centuries prior to the poet's time, is an exemplary model of impatience, yet God still shows his loving mercy toward him, demonstrating that "the love he feels for his creatures whom he has nurtured and thus does not want to harm them" (Szarmach, 531). The poem ends with its opening lines.
, a collector of Medieval English texts. Before the manuscript came into Cotton's possession, it was in the library of Henry Savile of Bank in Yorkshire
. Little is known about its previous ownership, and until 1824, when the manuscript was introduced to the academic community in a second edition of Thomas Warton
's History edited by Richard Price, it was almost entirely unknown. Now held in the British Library
, it has been dated to the late 14th century, so the poet was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer
, author of The Canterbury Tales
, though it is highly unlikely that they ever met. The three other works found in the same manuscript as Pearl (commonly known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
, Pearl
, and Cleanness
or Purity) are often considered to be written by the same author. However, the manuscript containing these poems was transcribed by a copyist and not by the original poet, known by scribal errors. Suggested emandations may be found in "Patience: An Alliterative Version of "Jonah" by the Poet of "Pearl." Although nothing explicitly suggests that all four poems are by the same poet, comparative analysis of dialect, verse form, and diction have pointed towards single-authorship.
What is known today about the poet is largely general. As J. R. R. Tolkien
and E.V. Gordon, after reviewing the text's allusions, style, and themes, concluded in 1925:
W. A. Davenport commented:
The most commonly suggested candidate for authorship is John Massey of Cotton, Cheshire. He is known to have lived in the dialect region of the Pearl Poet and is thought to have written the poem, St. Erkenwald
, which some scholars argue bears stylistic similarities to Gawain. St. Erkenwald, however, has been dated by some scholars to a time outside the Gawain poet's era. Thus, ascribing authorship to John Massey is still controversial and most critics consider the Gawain poet an unknown.
Furthermore, the author changes perspective "with an eye toward the psychological motives of God, as well as Jonah" (Szarmach,568). This humanizes God, which would not have been a known theological concept in the 14th century, distinguishing this poem from the others.
Middle English
Middle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
alliterative
Alliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the Pearl-Poet or Gawain-Poet, also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...
, Pearl
Pearl (poem)
Pearl is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the "Pearl poet" or "Gawain poet", is generally assumed, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness or...
, and Cleanness
Cleanness
Cleanness is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the Pearl poet or Gawain poet, also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Patience, and may have...
(all ca. 1360-1395) and may have composed St. Erkenwald
St. Erkenwald (poem)
St. Erkenwald is an alliterative poem of the fourteenth century, thought to have been composed in 1386. It has sometimes been attributed to the Pearl poet . It takes as its subject Erkenwald, the bishop of London between 675 and 693....
. This is thought to be true because the techniques and vocabulary of regional dialect of the unknown author is that of Northwest Midlands, located between Shropshire and Lancashire.
The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x
Robert Bruce Cotton
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Baronet was an English antiquarian and Member of Parliament, founder of the important Cotton library....
is in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
. The first published edition was in Early English Alliterative Poems in the West Midland Dialect of the fourteenth century, printed by the Early English Text Society
Early English Text Society
The Early English Text Society is an organization to reprint early English texts, especially those only available in manuscript. Most of its volumes are in Middle English and Old English...
.
Of Patience, considered the slightest of the four poems, its only manifest source is the Vulgate Bible. It also resembles a Latin poem by Tertullian and Bishop Marbod. There are certain mannerisms found in Patience that Pearl does not have. For instance, both homilies clearly follow the same pattern: 1. statement of theme, 2. announcement of the text from the New Testament, 3. discussion of another passage from the New Testament in elucidation of that text, 4. and elaborate paraphrase of exemplum or exempla, from the Old Testament.
Genre and poetics
A didactic, homiletic poem, “Patience” consists of 530 lines. AlliterationAlliteration
In language, alliteration refers to the repetition of a particular sound in the first syllables of Three or more words or phrases. Alliteration has historically developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to...
is used consistently throughout the poem, usually with three alliterating words per line. The very last line repeats the opening line of the poem, giving it a kind of cyclic feel. The unidentified narrator speaks in the first person throughout the work, posing as an autobiography.
Narrative
The narrator/homilist begins by praising patience, setting it among eight virtues (which he calls blessings) or typically known as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5:3-10 from the Sermon on the Mount, which he hears in mass one day. He closely associates it with poverty, closing with an admonition not to grumble or fight one’s fate, as Jonah did (ll. 1 - 56). The remainder of the work utilizes the story of Jonah as an exemplumExemplum
An exemplum is a moral anecdote, brief or extended, real or fictitious, used to illustrate a point.-Exemplary literature:...
which illustrates and justifies the admonition to accept the will of God patiently. Jonah's story delineates his own impatience because he could not handle the burden of what he was supposed to do--preach to the Ninevites.
Notably, patience is generally paired in opposition to sloth. Medieval schools of thought would have condemned sloth, portraying negative consequences of those who fall into sloth, which essentially, is what the poet is trying to convey. Jonah, although written centuries prior to the poet's time, is an exemplary model of impatience, yet God still shows his loving mercy toward him, demonstrating that "the love he feels for his creatures whom he has nurtured and thus does not want to harm them" (Szarmach, 531). The poem ends with its opening lines.
Author
Though the real name of the author, called "The Pearl Poet", is unknown, some inferences about him/her can be drawn from an informed reading of his/her works. The original manuscript is known in academic circles as Cotton Nero A.x, following a naming system used by one of its owners, Robert CottonRobert Bruce Cotton
Sir Robert Bruce Cotton, 1st Baronet was an English antiquarian and Member of Parliament, founder of the important Cotton library....
, a collector of Medieval English texts. Before the manuscript came into Cotton's possession, it was in the library of Henry Savile of Bank in Yorkshire
Yorkshire
Yorkshire is a historic county of northern England and the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its great size in comparison to other English counties, functions have been increasingly undertaken over time by its subdivisions, which have also been subject to periodic reform...
. Little is known about its previous ownership, and until 1824, when the manuscript was introduced to the academic community in a second edition of Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton
Thomas Warton was an English literary historian, critic, and poet. From 1785 to 1790 he was the Poet Laureate of England...
's History edited by Richard Price, it was almost entirely unknown. Now held in the British Library
British Library
The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom, and is the world's largest library in terms of total number of items. The library is a major research library, holding over 150 million items from every country in the world, in virtually all known languages and in many formats,...
, it has been dated to the late 14th century, so the poet was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, author of The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
, though it is highly unlikely that they ever met. The three other works found in the same manuscript as Pearl (commonly known as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...
, Pearl
Pearl (poem)
Pearl is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the "Pearl poet" or "Gawain poet", is generally assumed, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Patience, and Cleanness or...
, and Cleanness
Cleanness
Cleanness is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the Pearl poet or Gawain poet, also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Patience, and may have...
or Purity) are often considered to be written by the same author. However, the manuscript containing these poems was transcribed by a copyist and not by the original poet, known by scribal errors. Suggested emandations may be found in "Patience: An Alliterative Version of "Jonah" by the Poet of "Pearl." Although nothing explicitly suggests that all four poems are by the same poet, comparative analysis of dialect, verse form, and diction have pointed towards single-authorship.
What is known today about the poet is largely general. As J. R. R. Tolkien
J. R. R. Tolkien
John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, CBE was an English writer, poet, philologist, and university professor, best known as the author of the classic high fantasy works The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and The Silmarillion.Tolkien was Rawlinson and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon at Pembroke College,...
and E.V. Gordon, after reviewing the text's allusions, style, and themes, concluded in 1925:
W. A. Davenport commented:
The Gawain-poet had a flair for vivid pictures and dramatic situations, and found intellectual delight in pattern: combinations of qualities provides much of the enjoyment of the poems, the conflict between them some uncertainty and complexity. Four works were shaped by a man of subtle mind, interested in not just narrative and describing opportunities of his material, but in exploring its equivocal nature. Many problems experienced by readers in interpreting poems, and the wide variety of interpretations offered for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are shown to stem from the poet’s complex view of moral questions (103).
The most commonly suggested candidate for authorship is John Massey of Cotton, Cheshire. He is known to have lived in the dialect region of the Pearl Poet and is thought to have written the poem, St. Erkenwald
St. Erkenwald (poem)
St. Erkenwald is an alliterative poem of the fourteenth century, thought to have been composed in 1386. It has sometimes been attributed to the Pearl poet . It takes as its subject Erkenwald, the bishop of London between 675 and 693....
, which some scholars argue bears stylistic similarities to Gawain. St. Erkenwald, however, has been dated by some scholars to a time outside the Gawain poet's era. Thus, ascribing authorship to John Massey is still controversial and most critics consider the Gawain poet an unknown.
Style
Although most of the work is a paraphrase of the biblical Book of Jonah, the poet has expanded upon the text in many places. The chief characteristics of his expansions are a colloquial tone, esp. in Jonah’s prayers and his conversations with God, and the concrete descriptions which are used throughout. The homilist is creative, which Jonah's monologues and descriptions of the storm and belly of the whale unveil the poet's improvisation and colorful retelling of story, such as the manner how Jonah floats into the whale's mouth "like a mote going through the church door" (268 ). This is meant as the antithesis of its example. Jonah is the impatient, which makes for a perfect "what not to do" example to include the poet's story.Furthermore, the author changes perspective "with an eye toward the psychological motives of God, as well as Jonah" (Szarmach,568). This humanizes God, which would not have been a known theological concept in the 14th century, distinguishing this poem from the others.
Editions
- Vantuono, William, ed. (1984) The Pearl Poems : an omnibus edition New York: Garland Pub. ISBN 0-8240-5450-4 (v. 1) ISBN 0-8240-5451-2 (v. 2) Text in both Middle English and Modern English
- Andrew, Malcolm and Waldron, Ronald. 2002. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript Berkeley: University of California Press. (4th ed.) ISBN 0-85989-514-9.
Translations
- Finch, Casey. “The Complete Works of the Pearl Poet” 1993. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-07871-3.
Commentary and criticism
- Andrew, Malcom, 1973. "Jonah and Christ in Patience." Modern Philology 70. 230-233.
- Andrew, Malcom and Robert J. Blanch, 1979. The Gawain-Poet: An Annotated Bibliography. New York, 112.
- Bateson, Hartley, 1970. Patience: A West Midland Poem of the Fourteenth Century. Manchester, 91-96.
- Berlin, Normand, 1961. “”Patience:” A Study in Poetic Elaboration.” Studia Neophilologica 33: 80 - 85.
- Conley, John, 1975. "Review: Untitled" Speculum Vol. 32, No. 4: 858-861. Published by Medieval Academy of America.
- Davenport, W.A., 1978. The Art of the Gawain-poet. London, 103-130.
- Davis, Adam Brooke, 1991 "What the Poet of Patience Really Did to the Book of Jonah." Viator 22: 267 – 78.
- Diekstra, F. N. M. 1974. “Jonah and “Patience”: The Psychology of a Prophet.” English Studies 55: 205 - 217.
- Friedman, John B. 1981. “Figural Typology in the Middle English “Patience.” In “The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century,” edited by Bernard S. Levy and Paul E. Szarmach. Kent, Ohio.
- Hill, Ordelle G. 1967. “The Late-Latin “De Jona” as a Source for “Patience.” Journal of English and Germanic Philology 66: 21 - 25,
- Howard, David, 1972. Reviewed work: The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study by A. C. Spearing. Published in Speculum, Vol. 47, No. 3: 548-551.
- Spearing, A.C., 1970. The Gawain-Poet: A Critical Study. Cambridge, 74-96.
- Szarmach, Paul E., M. Teresa Tavormina, Joel T. Rosenthal 1998. "Pearl-Poet" Medieval England: An Encyclopedia. New York: 586.
- A Manual of the writings in Middle English, 1050-1500, by members of the Middle English Group of the Modern Language Association of America. New Haven, Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences 1967-<1993>.