Using the epistemological thought of Saint Augustine as the key to thematic continuity, this book reads Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as a composite text with a continuous narrative that produces meaning through its own intricate internal structure. The book ultimately provides the reader with a clear sense of the poet's perspective on the nature of human knowledge as well as its moral implications and with a deeper understanding of how the poems bring the theological and philosophical problems of the Middle Ages to bear on the individual human experience.