READERS OF PURITY have repeatedly remarked on the poem's rich descrip-
tive texture, seeing its lavish use of concrete and sensuous imagery as an
argument for common authorship of the Cotton Nero poems. Much of the
power of these descriptions also resides in their replication of perceptual
processes. Like the descriptions in Pearl, descriptions in Purity conform to
direct visual experience and operate as sensory cues, directing spectators
both within and outside of the narrative to interpret what they see accord-
ing to their lines of sight. Purity is, of course, profoundly different from
Pearl in its narrative system, offering as it does a series of stories linked by
homiletic commentary rather than one narrative linked by a single con-
sciousness, the mind and sensory field of the dreamer. Nevertheless, de-
scriptive passages individually establish a complex visual hermeneutic, di-
recting textual eyewitnesses as well as readers in a visual process that is
preparatory to eschatological vision, the sight of God on his throne.

In this chapter I offer a reading of the processes of spectatorship in
Purity. This study of description is in many ways methodologically similar
to the discussion of Pearl, but it includes as well an exploration of the idea of
vision in apocalyptic history: Specifically, how is Purity's visionary eschatol-
ogy, insistently reiterated through the promise of the "sight" of God
enthroned, juxtaposed to vision in Old Testament time? This contrast, I
argue, is realized through the representation of much more homely kinds of
vision -- and specifically through the focused descriptive scenes that illus-
trate the biblical stories. The poem's highly detailed descriptions, such as
the storm at sea, Solomon's vessels, or the ruins of the twin cities, attain
verisimilitude not only through enumeration of detail but also through
visual framing and focusing, techniques of spatialization that create an
implied audience even when there is no textual witness actually present.

By establishing a link between the reader and the spectator in the text
and then by placing the witnessed scene within a homiletic and specifically

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