Cleanness

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.

It takes three subjects from the Bible as its illustrations: the Flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, and the fall of Belshazzar.

This exemplum, explained by lines 171–192, follows directly from the previous sartorial metaphor and serves to show why the hearers should give attention to cleanness.

1149–1796) recounts the conquest of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar and the transfer of the Temple treasures to Babylon where they were treated with reverence by the king.

[3][4] Now held in the British Library, it has been dated to the late 14th century, so the poet was a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer, author of The Canterbury Tales, though it is highly unlikely that they ever met.

Although nothing explicitly suggests that all four poems are by the same poet, comparative analysis of dialect, verse form, and diction have pointed towards single-authorship.

As J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon, after reviewing the text's allusions, style, and themes, concluded in 1925: He was a man of serious and devout mind, though not without humour; he had an interest in theology, and some knowledge of it, though an amateur knowledge perhaps, rather than a professional; he had Latin and French and was well enough read in French books, both romantic and instructive; but his home was in the West Midlands of England; so much his language shows, and his metre, and his scenery.

[8] He is known to have lived in the dialect region of the Pearl Poet and is thought to have written the poem, St. Erkenwald, which some scholars argue bears stylistic similarities to Gawain.

Thus, ascribing authorship to John Massey is still controversial, and most critics consider the Gawain poet an unknown.

[6] It uses the homiletic principles of education with entertainment (Horace's utile et dulce) and is primarily rooted in Biblical stories.

The technique of presenting exempla and then explicating them as demonstrations of moral principles is characteristic of many sermons of the medieval period.