In illo tempore--the late sixties--I had a friend who was studying for a
doctorate in medieval lit at Berkeley. He was also studying "street"
pharmacology. His academic studies came to an end when the two came
together in a dream-vison: a figure in 14th century costume announced to
him that he was the Pearl Poet, Botwine Lincoln by name. He showed up at my
door the next morning, wild with excitement--he was going to be a
celebrity. I tried to talk him down, but to no avail: he wrote a paper
about his dream and presented it the following week in his graduate
seminar, announcing he had discovered the identity of the Pearl Poet. The
prof was not amused.
Mark
>One thing not to do as a fresh-cheeked undergraduate in Glasgow in the
>sixties was to write an essay on accentual metre which argues that "Hvalsey"
>is what English verse would have been like if the Gawain Poet had won.
>
>I might even have got away with that -- what really did for me was alleging
>that Berry's publication of GGK in the anthology at the end of the first
>edition of the Pelican History of EngLit was more important than the
>Tolkien&Gordon edition.
>
>Even that I might just have managed, if the essay had been for the English
>School rather than the Language School.
>
>What finally did for me wasn't the occasions where I was greeted by blank
>incomprehension, but the times when I was half-understood.
>
>"Don't let your thought dreams ever be seen / Or they'll put your head in a
>guillotine."
>
>Ho hum.
>
>Robin
>
>(George Mackay Brown?
>
>Jus' a thot.
>
>Saint Magnus.)
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