Medieval Poetry

In a curious way, discussion of the poetic strategies undertaken in the Pearl manuscript has less to do with the internal features of the text itself than with the multiple interpretations and critiques that have evolved to explain the meanings of the poems involved. There is no question that, as Finch explains (1), the text typically called the Pearl was uniquely found in the "MS Cotton Nero A.x, Art. 3, now held in the British Library." The facts that "no single line of these poems has been discovered in any other manuscript" (Ward and Trent, et al.) and that the identity of the poet is unknown and has long been disputed by scholars (Finch 1-3) complicate interpretations. That is a point to which this research will return. Before getting into that, however, a look at the texts themselves is in order.

Each of the three poems takes its title from the first word of the first line of the respective texts. Each poem, too, is allegorical and symbolical, inasmuch as elaborate figures of speech are drawn around the dominant image, or theme, of

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ebuchadnezzar and the Babylonian captivity--and of the Babylonians lost their empire to Darius, not least because Nebuchadnezzar's son Belshazzar violated the purity of the Jews' religious artifacts by using them at a party: "You'll believe, then, the Lord felt great loathing and was / Much displeased with that sport! For He saw on that day / All his precious things, previously piously used, / Being fouled by fellows unfaithful and low" (1494-1496). The image of violation of the vessels by the feast acts as a kind of bookend to the references to the reverence with which sacramental vessels are to be treated at the opening of Cleanness. The anti-sodomy theme, meanwhile, is aimed at personal behavior, and it has been suggested that Cleanness "is concerned more with surveillance by God and by the clergy [of human behavior] than with the faithful's vision of God" (Frantzen 453), as, for example, Brzezinski argues. That is backed up by the lengthy description of the Dead Sea, where the poet locates the former cities of the plain, where all is poison, where nothing living grows or can grow (Cleanness 1020-1045). God's judgment on deliberate impurity, which is involved with careless or abusive treatment of God's sacramentals, is to be as
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 3974
Approximate Pages = 16 (250 words per page)

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