30th May 2024

Professor Helen Barr Publishes New Critical Edition of ‘Patience’

Photo of Helen Barr sitting in a study, alongside an image of the cover of her book 'Patience'

Emeritus Fellow in English Professor Helen Barr has published a new critical edition of the Middle English poem Patience with Broadview Press. This edition aims to make the poem more accessible for modern readers.

Patience, a late 14th Century poem, retells the biblical story of Jonah and the whale in Middle English alliterative verse. The dialogue between God and Jonah explores the limits of human endurance against capricious power, the destruction of civilisations, the insignificance of humans compared with the unpredictable force of the natural world, and sudden displacements from one's homeland. With humour and tenderness, Patience questions who suffers more? God, or the humans He created.

Professor Barr has shared Patience with many LMH students during her more than 30 years as an English tutor, and this book is the culmination of her determination to raise awareness of the poem among modern audiences through her modern English translation. 

"I have shared discussion of this wonderful poem with generations of LMH students," said Professor Barr. "In contrast to its more well-known manuscript companions Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Pearl," she continues, "there was no translation available that re-reproduced how voice and modulation of tone articulate the dynamics of Patience. I wanted to try to fill that gap through a making a translation into modern English poetry.” 

Professor Barr's new edition of Patience offers a way for contemporary readers to engage with its themes of endurance, power, and suffering, opening the door for new audiences to appreciate this medieval work.