Reviewed by:

• Death and the Pearl Maiden: Plague, Poetry, England by David K. Coley
• Frank Swannack

Death and the Pearl Maiden tackles a literary mystery that has puzzled late medieval scholars. The plague known as the Black Death, which caused millions of deaths in Europe and England, is hardly mentioned in late medieval English literature. David K. Coley offers a complex, multifaceted, and often brilliant explanation of why the unflinching descriptions of the Black Death’s devastation in European texts make England’s underwhelming literary response disturbingly conspicuous.

Coley focuses on four Middle English works preserved in the British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, article 3 (Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) written at the height of the endemic between the 1370s and 1390s. Coley argues that the collected poems powerfully meditate on the plague and its cultural aftermath, eschewing a direct account. His argument uses trauma as a literary tool because traumatic events negotiate the fraught space ‘between acknowledgement and suppression’ (p. 6). The need to voice untold horrors becomes muted by their very nature.

Coley’s analytical method is split between providing insightful readings, and self-critical comments. Early in the Introduction, he admits that the texts being examined contain no substantial evidence of engaging with the plague. He adds that his thesis is entirely speculative and based on allusive references. [End Page 195] His admission, however, becomes a critique of the New Historicist approach requiring that literature has a direct and clearly traceable engagement with historic events. Throughout the study, the pattern of anticipating the critical response to his readings enables Coley to add another layer to his speculative insights.

Death and the Pearl Maiden examines first the second poem from the MS Cotton Nero A.x, Cleanness. The poem’s descriptions of dismemberment and death graphically adapted from the Book of Genesis resonate with the Black Death. By looking back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot’s wife acts as a ‘traumatic witness’ to catastrophic events (p. 34). She embodies Coley’s thesis as being a readable symbol for an unspeakable traumatic event and its silenced victims.

The analysis of Pearl begins with an illustration of Christ’s crucifixion from the Holkham Bible (1327–40). As it precedes the Black Death, the image is startling both in its prescience and how it undermines Coley’s thesis. The illustration shows Christ’s body covered with blue-black spots and sores. Coley’s point is that the illustration provides a common context in which the sins of the world can be absorbed into any pestilence-influenced text. The illustration also shows that because Pearl contains many references to bodily sores and swellings, it does not necessarily signify the Black Death. Perhaps in recognition of such criticism, Coley augments his argument through the poem’s references to odours and summertime that resonate further with the medieval experience of the plague.

Patience adapts the biblical story of Jonah, who, fleeing from God’s command to go to Nineveh, ends up in a whale’s body for three days. Before analysing the poem, Coley discusses intriguing research on the psychology of flight. Rather than escaping the terror, flight involves fleeing to familiar enclosures, even if it means more danger. By magnifying Jonah’s notion of flight without refuge in Patience, Coley provides a convincing historical context to the futility of trying to escape the Black Death.

In Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Coley examines the female character Morgan le Fay. He argues that she represents the cultural changes the Black Death thrust upon England. The plague’s devastation of over half of England’s population created a labour shortage, giving aristocratic women greater autonomy in social and economic affairs. As the monstrous sorceress and crone, Morgan le Fay personifies the immoral female sexuality associated with the spreading of the Black Death. Furthermore, as the Lady of the Manor’s associate, her influential presence in...

审核人：

• 死亡与珍珠少女：瘟疫，诗歌，英格兰戴维·科利（David K. Coley）
• 弗兰克·斯旺纳克

《死亡与珍珠少女》解开了一个文学迷，使中世纪晚期的学者感到困惑。中世纪晚期英国文学中几乎没有提及被称为“黑死病”的瘟疫，该病在欧洲和英国造成了数百万人死亡。大卫·科利（David K. Coley）提供了一个复杂，多面且通常精妙的解释，说明为什么欧洲文本对黑死病的毁灭性坚定描述使英格兰的压倒性文学反响令人不安地引人注目。

Coley着重研究了保存在1370到1390年代流行高峰期的大英图书馆MS Cotton Nero Ax所保存的四种中古英语作品，第3条（《珍珠》，《清洁》，《耐心》，《高文爵士》和《绿色骑士》）。科利认为，所收集的诗歌强烈地沉思了瘟疫及其文化后果，避免了直接的叙述。他的论证使用创伤作为一种文学工具，因为创伤事件在“承认与压制之间”协商了烦恼的空间（第6页）。发出难以置信的恐惧的声音因其天性而被淡化。

Coley的分析方法分为提供有见识的阅读和自我批评的评论。在导言的开头，他承认所检查的文本没有任何实质性证据表明与瘟疫有关。他补充说，他的论文完全是推测性的，是基于典故的。[结束第195页]然而，他的承认成为对新历史主义者方法的批判，该方法要求文学必须对历史事件具有直接且清晰可追溯的参与。在整个研究过程中，预期对读物的批判反应的模式使Coley能够为他的投机洞察力增添新的层次。

《死亡与珍珠少女》首先从MS Cotton Nero Axe的Cleanness中考察了第二首诗。这首诗对肢解和死亡的描述图形化地改编自《创世纪》，与《黑死病》产生了共鸣。通过回顾索多玛和戈莫拉的毁灭，罗特的妻子充当了灾难性事件的“创伤见证”（第34页）。她将Coley的论文体现为无法形容的创伤事件及其沉默的受害者的可读符号。

对珍珠的分析始于《霍尔汉姆圣经》（1327–40）中基督被钉十字架的插图。在《黑死病》问世之前，这幅图像的预知性以及它破坏科利论文的方式都令人吃惊。下图显示基督的身体布满了蓝黑斑点和疮。Coley的观点是，插图提供了一个通用的上下文，在这个上下文中，世界的罪恶可以被吸收到任何受瘟疫影响的文本中。插图还显示，因为珍珠包含许多关于身体疮和肿胀的参考，它不一定表示黑死病。也许是对这种批评的认可，科利通过这首诗提到的气味和夏日来增强了他的论点，这种气味与鼠疫的中世纪经历进一步产生了共鸣。

耐心改写了约拿的圣经故事，约拿从上帝的命中逃往尼尼微，最终在鲸鱼的身体中呆了三天。在分析这首诗之前，Coley讨论了关于飞行心理的有趣研究。飞行并没有逃避恐怖，而是逃离了熟悉的机舱，即使这意味着更多的危险。通过在没有耐心的情况下扩大乔纳的逃避观念，科利提供了令人信服的历史背景，证明逃避黑死病徒劳无功。

在《高文爵士》和《绿色骑士》中，科利研究了女性角色摩根·莱·菲（Morgan le Fay）。他认为她代表了黑死病对英格兰的文化改变。瘟疫对英格兰一半以上的人口造成破坏，造成了劳动力短缺，使贵族妇女在社会和经济事务中享有更大的自主权。作为可怕的女巫和老太婆，摩根·莱·费伊（Morgan le Fay）体现了与黑死病蔓延有关的不道德的女性性行为。此外，作为庄园的同伴夫人，她在...方面的影响力也很大。