The Spoils of Neo-Babylon: Widening the Lens of Empire and Re-Centering Modernity in Cleanness

Whereas some scholars argue that the medieval West saw Babylon as a cultural backwater with monstrous roots, the poet of the fourteenth-century Middle English poem Cleanness privileges the Neo-Babylonian Empire as it develops its historico-ethical agenda. Cleanness, an alliterative homily designed to promote ethical behavior by dwelling on filthy acts, is fundamentally divided into three exempla. The poet distances the third exemplum from the opening stories of the Flood and Sodom, by marking a clear transition from the misty and archaic world of Genesis to a more recognizably historical Neo-Babylonian setting for Belshazzar's Feast. Whereas some scholars see a continuous parade of exempla equally censorious of unclean sinners, I argue that the final exemplum of the poem, by being both recognizably historical and geographically complex, makes Neo-Babylon the setting for the poem's most salient study of human ethics. The geographical richness and historical verisimilitude that characterize the Neo-Babylon of Cleanness can also be seen by the poet's use of a multi-ethnic Trojan War and diaspora to frame Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. The Cleanness-Poet's realistic depiction of Neo-Babylonian history strikingly situates the poem's key ethical lesson in a non-Western setting. To portray the poem's ultimate ethical test as a choice between being like Nebuchadnezzar or Belshazzar, the poet makes use of the tropes of the “righteous heathen” and the “homo sacer” to transform Nebuchadnezzar into a remarkable protagonist whose suffering can instruct audiences in clean behavior.