The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet: Beyond Phi

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Summary: An Extraordinary Book, Not Just For Medievalists!
Review: If you enjoyed The DaVinci Code, you will surely be fascinated by this book, which demonstrates that the Gawain-Pearl poet "encoded" mathematics, music, architecture and more within the expertly crafted pages of his manuscript.

One need not be a medievalist to find this book compelling. Mathematicians will enjoy this book's demonstration that mathematics and language can work together toward a poet's goal. Yet one need not be a mathematician to appreciate the Gawain-Pearl poet's stunning artistic triumph, which this book so masterfully illustrates.

If you enjoy finding "codes" and patterns and symmetries in literature, which not only challenge the reader but also enrich the meaning and enjoyment of the text, you will surely appreciate this book. Professor Condren has unlocked the rich mysteries of a little-known medieval manuscript with this thought-provoking book, which may even change the way you look at literature.

Rating:
Summary: Stunning Achievement in Middle English Criticism
Review: Though a dense and academic-oriented work, Professor Edward Condren's The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet also opens a lay window into the medieval mind as important and accessible as Barbara Tuchman's A Distant Mirror. This may not have been the Professor's intent, to appeal to a non-academic audience, but the book's conclusions are immensely appealing and compelling. The author strips away 600 years of modern thought and filters, and in the process manifests the fourteenth century intellectual and spiritual mind.

Together, the four poems in the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript are a literary, pre-decimal attempt at using irrational numbers, arithmetic and harmonic ratios, and their link to infinity to describe The Infinite. The Indescribable can have metaphors via mathematics and the rest of the quadrivium that effect God's true values and instruction for man.

Professor Condren layers direct observation, a history of academic criticism, as well as directly leaning upon Plato, Augustine, and Boethius to fix the primacy of math in the medieval philosophical consciousness. Mathematics was seen "to bridge the worlds of flesh and spirit." (p. 3) This should not be a stretch when we reconsider the "belief" in alchemy.

Professor Condren has to ride multiple analytic horses to build his case. He combines Phi expansions implying infinite growth, concentric rings implying spiritual growth, to iconoclastic textural analysis to build his argument and coordinate disparate disciplines well enough to convince readers who may only have knowledge in one of the disciplines that he relies upon.

The Pearl Poet uses the medieval quadrivium as Umberto Eco uses semiotics and James Joyce used Shakespeare. By grounding his four poems in the quadrivium, the poet makes use of a known system for better explicating his world. Just as readers should not attempt Joyce's Ulysses without the New Bloomsday Book, one should not begin any of the poems of the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript without The Numerical Universe of the Gawain-Pearl Poet.