A friend of mine, in grad school at Berkeley in the late sixties-early seventies, studying literature and hallucinogens, claimed in fact to know, and from an impeccable source. The Gawain/Pearl Poet had appeared to him, appropriately, in a dream-vision and announced his identity. Shortly thereafter, in my friend's Medieval lecture course, the prof mentioned that nobody knew the Gawain Poet's identity, at which my friend interrupted: "I know," he said, "his name was Botwine Lincoln. He came to me in a dream and told me so."
That was the end of my friend's graduate career.
It never occurred to him that the fellow in the dream might have been lying, of course--we tend to trust the figments of our imaginations.
Mark
-----Original Message-----
From: Dominic Fox <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Aug 5, 2005 12:26 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: any formalists in the crowd? -- thanks to Annie Finch!
> Langland ain't the Gawain Poet neither.
How do you *know*?
Dominic
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