“Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript elegantly explores the power of speculation and delight in the singular copy of some of the most beautiful medieval poetry that exists. Although manuscript study sometimes trades in empirical satisfactions, Bahr provides a salutary reminder that literary texts traffic in deliberate and artful impediments to solid knowledge. Exploring both what can be known about material texts and also what can be imagined, Bahr offers an adventurous multilayered reading of both text and book and provides an important reinterpretation of the codex and its poems.”

Jessica Brantley, Yale University

“Like the hunters of the fleshly and the ineffable in the Pearl-poems themselves, Bahr tracks physical writing through the manuscript, down to movements of the pen or pointing hands (richly illustrated here). He thereby sets out an authoritative reading of these poems and, by reflecting on the value of speculating, a bold model for studying material texts and literary works together.”

Daniel Wakelin, University of Oxford

“Intricate, passionate, continually surprising, and beautifully written, Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript is at once a brilliant successor to Bahr’s first book, Fragments and Assemblages, and a wondering tribute to a wondrous manuscript.”

Nicholas Watson, Harvard University