In this project—in conjunction with the English Honors Thesis program—I aim to take a keywords approach to the late 14th century manuscript Cotton Nero A.x, which contains the only surviving copies of four masterpieces of alliterative Middle English poetry in a highly wrought Yorkshire dialect: Pearl, “Patience,” “Cleanness,” and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. To do so, I will examine four words—“perle,” “clene,” “poynt,” and “frayst,” a verb meaning “to put to the test” or “to challenge;” in turn, I will show that despite the four poems’ differences in theme, style, and genre, these keywords allow us to approach Cotton Nero A.x as an interconnected poetic dialogue, dealing with questions of political power, gender, divinity, and problematizations of signification.