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Concept
Cleanness
Summary
Cleanness (Middle English: Clannesse) is a Middle English alliterative poem written in the late 14th century. Its unknown author, designated the Pearl poet or Gawain poet, also appears, on the basis of dialect and stylistic evidence, to be the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Patience, and may have also composed St. Erkenwald.
The poem is found solely in the Pearl manuscript, Cotton Nero A x. That manuscript also contains Pearl, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. None of the poems has a title or divisions of chapters, but the breaks are marked by large initial letters of blue, and there are twelve illustrations (or illuminations) contained within the manuscript, depicting scenes from the four poems. Each of these poems is entirely unique to this one manuscript. Cleanness (which is an editorial title) is also known by the editorial title Purity.
The manuscript, Cotton Nero A.x is in the British Library. The first complete publication of Cleanness was in Early English Alliterative Poems in the West Midland Dialect of the fourteenth century, printed by the Early English Text Society in 1864.
Cleanness is a description of the virtues of cleanliness of body and the delights of married love. It takes three subjects from the Bible as its illustrations: the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the fall of Belshazzar. Each of these is described powerfully, and the poetry is among the finest in Middle English. In each case, the poet warns his readers about the dangers of defilement and the joys of purity.
A didactic, homiletic poem, Cleanness consists of 1812 lines. Alliteration is used consistently throughout the poem, averaging around three alliterating words per line. The unidentified narrator or preacher speaks in the first person throughout the work.
It is an exemplum from the perspective of many.
The opening lines of the poem (ll. 1–50) function as a peroration in which the narrator states his theme by contrasting cleanness and purity with filth.
Official source
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