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Cleanness's Fecund and Barren Speech Acts Monica Brzezinski Potkay College of William and Mary Although the alliterative poem known ru; C/eanm.,, evidently concerns its titular virtue, readers frequently point out that the work never explicitly defines what it means by the term "clannesse." Rather, the poem illustrates this concept with a seemingly heterogeneous series of biblical exempla. What concept of cleanness do these exempla point to? What exactly is cleanness? While the poem's definition of cleanness embraces many aspects, surely one of the most important of these is introduced in the poem's opening lines: Clannesse, wher-so kyndly cowpe comende, And rekken vp alle pe resoun3 pat ho by ri3t aske3, Fayre forme3 my3t he fynde in forpering his speche, And in pe contrare kark and combraunce huge.1 These lines are notoriously difficult to translate, yet it is clear that they draw a connection between the quality of "clannesse" and beautiful lan­ guage. They tell us that whoever commends "clannesse" properly, as that quality deserves, will be able to do so through the "fayre formes"-exem­ pla or perhaps rhetorical tropes-he might discover, and which will "forper" or advance his speech.2 Establishing a connection between clean­ ness and eloquence, these lines imply that proper use of language is an important component ofmoral purity. That there is a linguistic facet to the 1 J. ]. Anderson, ed., Cleanness (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1977), lines 1-4. Subsequent citations to Cleanness are to this edition. 2 Andrew and Waldron translate, "Whoever were to commend cleanness fittingly, and reckon up all the arguments that she demands by right, lovely examples would he be able to find in advancing his discourse, and in the reverse enormous trouble and difficulty"; Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron, eds., The Poems ofthe Pearl Manuscript (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1982), p. 111. 99 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER virtue of cleanness is borne out by Cleanness's exempla: there the clean characters are depicted as eloquent, and the filthy ones as unskilled in speech. The exempla furthermore work to define clean language as powerfully efficacious. Cleanness depicts its pure characters as speaking a language which has the ability to effect what it signifies. And the poem underscores the power inhering in clean discourse by portraying that power not just on the literal level but on a metaphoric one as well: in the theme of sexual potency the poem finds a salient figure for linguistic potency. Clean charac­ ters are depicted as practicing a sexuality which always results in procre­ ation, as possessing a literal fertility which represents the fecundity oftheir discourse. Yet the poem claims pure and fecund eloquence not only for its exemplary figures but also for itself. Obviously the poet himself is a speaker who commends "clannesse," and the opening of his poem is de­ signed in part to draw attention to his own verbal virtuosity. The opening thus makes a claim for the poem itself: surely this work, since it recom­ mends "clannesse," must be supremely eloquent, must be a paradigm of clean and powerful language. Cleanness, then, not only hopes to explain that an important aspect of cleanness is eloquent and efficacious language but actually puts itself forward as a sublime example of such pure and potent speech. The poem, that is, would practice what it preaches. The concept of the efficacious speech act, the linguistic theory which animates Cleanness, is consistently illustrated in its exempla. All the charac­ ters who are exemplars of "clannesse" are shown to speak graciously and effectively. The connection these stories forge between moral purity and eloquently efficacious language is made most strongly in the section ofthe poem describing the life ofJesus. Here the Savior is described as healing the sick with his words alone: when approached by lepers, the lame, the blind, paralytics, and others suffering from a host of ills described in lines 1093-96, "He heled hem wyth hynde speche of pat pay ask after" (line 1098). Christ's words here are described with the word "hynde"-that wonderfully untranslatable Middle English adjective that connotes not just pleasantness and gentility but skill and dexterity as well. "Hynde" speech is...

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