Podcast Summary: New Books Network

Episode: Arthur Bahr, "Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight" (U Chicago Press, 2025)
Host: Mortaza Hajizadeh
Guest: Dr. Arthur Bahr, Professor of Literature, MIT
Date: December 20, 2025

Overview

This episode features Dr. Arthur Bahr discussing his latest book, Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript: Speculation, Shapes, Delight. The conversation dives into the singular Pearl Manuscript—a late 14th-century Middle English codex housing four remarkable poems, including "Pearl" and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Dr. Bahr examines the manuscript as a multimedia, devotional, and collaborative object, exploring the interplay of speculation, geometric structure, materiality, and delight in both the text and its physical embodiment.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Dr. Arthur Bahr's Background and Attraction to Medieval Manuscripts

• Bahr traces his fascination with the Middle Ages to his youth and undergraduate work at Amherst, especially under the mentorship of Howel "Chick" Chickering.
  • “I loved the fun and the wit of Sir Gawain. But I was most captivated by Pearl, both for its moving human drama and for its extraordinary literary form...” (03:11)
• His scholarly journey came full circle as he focused his second book on applying codicological approaches to the Pearl Manuscript.
  • “I decided to use my second book to bring that codicological or compilational approach to the Pearl poems and the only manuscript in which they’re preserved...” (04:20)

2. What is the Pearl Manuscript?

• Officially British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, saved by Sir Robert Cotton—the only source for "Pearl," "Cleanness," "Patience," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
  • “It is the only surviving copy of these poems...they seem to disappear entirely from literary history between the construction of this manuscript in the late 1300s and their re-emergence...in the 17th century by Cotton.” (07:32)
• Unique as the only alliterative Middle English verse manuscript, with idiosyncratic features and unexplained survival.

3. The Book's Guiding Concepts: Delight, Shapes, Speculation

• Delight: A motif from the poem "Pearl" and the book itself.
  • “I wanted to lean into the delight that these poems afford and that the poet evidently took in their creation...” (08:44)
• Shapes: Geometric and page-based; circles, spheres, pentangles, and visual layout shape both text and reader response.
  • “By shapes, I mean both geometric shapes...and I also mean page shapes...on the page and across the book.” (09:11)
• Speculation: A medieval mode combining intellectual and devotional attention—tracing what is partly hidden.
  • “Medieval speculation involves looking closely at what remains in order to trace the outlines of something not fully knowable, occluded, but real.” (09:47)
• The interplay of these three frames the unique experience and interpretative openness of the manuscript.

4. Speculation, Devotion, and the Visual Manuscript

• The manuscript, unusually for vernacular poetry, has full-page illustrations and is written in a script (textualis) typical of devotional texts.
  • “This is actually the earliest collection of Middle English verse that does.” (12:09)
• Small size (“just under 5 by 7 inches”) marks it as designed for private, contemplative use, similar to a Book of Hours.
• Bahr traces “speculation” from biblical metaphor (St. Paul, Augustine) to later medieval devotion and university learning, where sensory beauty led to spiritual understanding.
  • “Speculation first emerged in the early Middle Ages as a medieval devotional practice akin to meditation.” (13:13)

5. What Modern Editions Lose

• Modern printings often strip away the manuscript’s multimedia experience, physical intimacy, and collaborative aura.
  • “The first and most obvious thing that we lose is, of course, the illustrations...the Pearl Manuscript is an extraordinary outlier...” (18:56)
• The manuscript’s small size and mingling of visual, material, and textual elements make reading it a sensory and affective experience.

6. Manuscript as Collaborative, Multimedia Technology

• Production required author, scribe, illustrator, colorist, patron, and engaged readers.
  • “One thing that the Pearl manuscript really reinforces is the extent to which literary meaning emerges collaboratively...” (21:37)
• The accumulation of “dirt in the gutter” testifies to active, repeated readership.

7. Structural Irregularities: The Role of Midpoints and Asymmetries

• The poems, especially "Pearl," are highly wrought, and exceptions to their formal patterns (stanza length, extra lines) are marked and made meaningful—often by scribal notes (“manicules”).
  • “That means that Pearl has, in a sense, two different midpoints...that multiplication of these asymmetries is part of what I argue...turns the manuscript into an object of contemplation...” (23:34)

8. Physical Materiality and Theological Resonance in "Patience"

• Bahr discusses how the uneven quality of the parchment (hair side vs. flesh side) is physically felt and becomes thematically resonant, particularly in Jonah’s prayer from within the whale.
  • “As you read about Jonah being swallowed by the whale...you feel hair follicles when you would not expect to. These anomalous pages reinforce the manuscript’s status as animal...” (29:29)
• The humble materiality links to the poem’s themes of humility before God.

9. Visual Strangeness and Preparation for Sir Gawain

• Opening illustration of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" visually mirrors moments in "Cleanness," inviting theological reading of a secular romance.
  • “The opening illustration is complex in the sense that we have to read it temporally from Left to right...that visual similarity...would suggest that we should bring a spiritual or theological lens...” (31:58)
• The manuscript’s illustrations and geometric motifs prime the reader for interpretive challenges.

10. Circularity and Paradoxical Endings

• Sir Gawain is the only poem in the manuscript with illustrations after the text, not before—these loop the reader back, inviting rereading and reflection.
  • “There are also textual echoes of earlier poems in the manuscript at the very end of Sir Gawain that I think also would subtly loop us back around to the beginning...” (36:20)
• The ending image—the crown of thorns—serves as both line (spiky) and circle (round), echoing the structural and thematic circularity of "Pearl."

11. Kaleidoscope vs. Mirror as Metaphor for Interpretation

• Bahr chooses the kaleidoscope, rather than the mirror, as the best metaphor for the manuscript: interactive, shifting, and collaborative in generating meaning.
  • “The kaleidoscope offers a useful way of estranging our perspective on the mirror…The kaleidoscope is also interactive, unlike the passively reflective mirror, but like the medieval speculum and like speculation itself...” (39:35)

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the Manuscript’s Mystery:

  • “One enduring mystery, which my book does not try to solve, is why they should survive only here, in what turns out to be an especially idiosyncratic volume.” (07:46)

• On Delight:

  • “I wanted to lean into the delight that these poems afford and that the poet evidently took in their creation and that I believe, that the patron and first readers of this manuscript did as well.” (08:44)

• On Speculation as Devotion:

  • “Medieval speculation involves looking closely at what remains in order to trace the outlines of something not fully knowable, occluded, but real.” (09:47)

• On Collaborative Meaning:

  • “Literary meaning emerges collaboratively as the result of not just the author, but the scribe, the illustrator, the colorist, the patron… and that collective emergence...really contributes to that aura...” (21:37)

• On Materiality and Humility:

  • “I think more broadly, this use of very humble material…suggests the need, subtly suggests the need for humility before God...” (30:56)

• On Circularity:

  • “So the poem ends on the one hand with the image of the crown of thorns, which is a spiky thing...but it’s also round. And so that final image loops us back around to Pearl at the very beginning.” (38:11)

• On Kaleidoscope Metaphor:

  • “We are changed by what we handle. And that co implication of reader with book, student with object recalls the interactive dimension of medieval speculation, which is another reason I find that interpretive Mode so powerful.” (41:17)

Segment Timestamps

• [01:56]–[04:30] — Introduction to Dr. Bahr and his background
• [05:17]–[08:16] — What is the Pearl Manuscript and its unique features
• [08:36]–[11:04] — Key concepts: delight, shapes, speculation
• [12:08]–[17:35] — Visual and devotional nature of the manuscript; materiality
• [18:18]–[21:37] — Losses in modern editions; collaborative, multimedia nature
• [22:41]–[26:47] — Formal symmetries/asymmetries and interpretative midpoints
• [27:29]–[31:19] — Materiality in "Patience" and thematic resonance
• [31:58]–[35:06] — "Sir Gawain" illustrations and interpretive preparation
• [35:59]–[38:47] — Circular/looping endings and generative structure
• [39:35]–[41:50] — Kaleidoscope as a metaphor for reading and interacting with the manuscript

Conclusion

Bahr persuasively argues for the Pearl Manuscript as a singularly collaborative and sensory artifact—inviting delight, conjecture, and attentiveness. Rather than a passive "mirror" to medieval culture, the manuscript, like a kaleidoscope, provokes ongoing re-interpretation. The episode is essential listening for anyone intrigued by medieval literature, manuscript studies, or the interplay of materiality and meaning in the history of the book.