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Paper Abstract: Examines William Langland's 14th Century narrative poem. Social satirical aspects. Critique of society. Motif of the quality of life and faith. Themes of social injustice and spiritual salvation. The historical context and literary history. Ideas and narrative devices of the poem. Medieval influences on the author. Intellectual climate of the Middle Ages. Paper Introduction: This research examines William Langland's 14th-century extended narrative poem The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman (aka Piers Plowman) as a poetic exercise in social satire. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical context and literary history surrounding the production of Piers Plowman and then to discuss the pattern of ideas and narrative devices in the text that tend to support the view that it is structured in a way meant to comment on society and the social behavior familiar and important to Langland, namely, a society in which the most important feature of the quality of life was the quality of faith, or the individual's experience of God. In his anthology of philosophical and theological writings of the 12th to 14th centuries Marenbon says that the study of medie Text of the Paper: The entire text of the paper is shown below. However, the text is somewhat scrambled. We want to give you as much information as we possibly can about our papers and essays, but we cannot give them away for free. In the text below you will find that while disordered, many of the phrases are essentially intact. From this text you will be able to get a solid sense of the writing style, the concepts addressed, and the sources used in the research paper. [lxiv]Pigg, 435. So taken with his own account of his troubles vis-à-vis the rest ofthe world, Repentance interrupts to remind Envy that repentance is a roadto salvation. "history of spirituality" becomes almost a branch of social history, deeply influenced by the work of structural-functionalist anthropologists and of phenomenologists of religion.[xi] What this idea comes down to is that subtext and context, not text,may be the most revealing aspect of any historical document, includingpoetry. . More generally, there was during Aquinas's time andfor long afterward not the least hint of what would become Protestantismand the Reformation. None, Langland says, are sooner saved or firmer in their faith than plowmen and the poor common people (C XII, 292-93).[lxii] The abundant evidence of earnestness in regard to concern for commonpeople and respect for the work done by manual labor rather than, say, thelabor done at a desk (or in a church), helps explain Skeat's implicationthat as a satirist Langland lacked an aesthetic or emotional distance fromissues close to his heart. Skeat's method of addressingthat fact is to compare the satirical approach of Chaucer to that ofLangland. BibliographyAttwater, Rachel. [lxiii]Skeat, xxviii. [ii]Walter W. The quotation continues: The author of Piers Ploughman, no doubt, embodied in a poetic dress just what millions felt, and perhaps hundreds had uttered in one fragmentary for or another. [lviii]Langland, 61. A Mentor Book. For poor men have no power to complain, though they smart, Such a master is Meed among men of wealth.[xxiii]It need hardly be said that the record of churchmen of the medieval periodwas often to declare themselves celibate and then set about multiplefornications. Indeed, only Piers himself and the(unnamed) dreamer have anything like full-blown human verisimilitude,though at various points in the text one or more among the "field full offolk" observed by the dreamer in the Prologue assumes the characteristicsof some human need. Translated by Donald and Rachel Attwater. Luxury/Lechery. This suggests that the three versions of Piers Plowman, texts A, B,and C, which are generally held to be successive revisions and emendationsby the author,[xii] far from creating textual difficulties of authenticityor multiple authorship, can be seen to reveal different and/or maturingstages of Langland's perception over the course of his literary life.Further, there is a level of detail about the circumstances of socialexperience in medieval England that arises from the poetic treatment ofcertain themes that Langland undertakes in Piers Plowman. . The Story of English. . Yet a reading that went no further than this would be superficial, for the presence of the Church is in fact implicit in the counsels Piers offers the knight on the nature of his social responsibilities, and in a very specific way. [xxxvii]Ryan, 75. [iii]William M. Dutton & Co. This does not prevent Meed fromtempting Wit, Wisdom, Wrong, and all lawyers from preferring Meed to Reasonwhen given the choice. [xxvii]Ibid., 41-2. v-x.Bynum, Caroline Walker. [xii]M. After he has been thus elevated, various laymen solicit his service.[lx] In such manner does the last become first and the first last. [iv]Anne Fremantle, The Age of Belief: The Medieval Philosophers (NewYork: New American Library, A Mentor Book, 1954), passim. By William Langland, Translated Donald and Rachel Attwater. By William Langland. 1957. [xxxiii]Skeat, 132. He articulates the source of Truth as in theindividual's heart, after also referencing the Decalogue and seven virtuesto balance the seven deadly sins. . 1957), 65. When . New York: Routledge, 1991.McCrum, Robert William Cran, and Robert MacNeil. He also observes that the gate to theheart of truth cannot be opened without the gift of grace and the virtues.Immediately there is attrition in the pilgrim ranks: "Now, by Christ!" quoth a cutpurse "I have no kin here!" "Nor I," quoth an apeward "for aught I know!"[xlix] The best Piers can do is push the pilgrims "towards good," though apardoner, seeing the opportunity for fresh customers, betakes himself toassemble "briefs bishop's letters and a bull."[l] For his part, Piers hasmuch work to do. It is Glutton'sfart."[xliii] Worshippers ordinarily leave mass with the intention ofactively going about the Lord's business, but he is so drunk that hecollapses when trying to leave the tavern and has to be supported home tosleep it off. . The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman. In his anthology of philosophical and theological writings of the 12thto 14th centuries Marenbon says that the study of medieval discourse "callsfor the skills of both the historian and the philosopher": the historian's in order to understand the presuppositions and aims which made the concerns of thinkers in the Middle Ages so different from those of modern philosophy; the philosopher's, because the achievements of medieval thinkers can only be appreciated by the close philosophical analysis of their reasoning.[i]Marenbon cuts his study of medieval texts off in the middle of the 14thcentury, just before the period in which Piers Plowman was first composed--1362 according to Skeat and the Attwaters[ii] (who follow Skeat), 137 according to Ryan.[iii] But his comments about the medieval mind speak tothis research because of their connection to habits of thought that wouldhave been familiar to Langland as author of Piers Plowman and because theyhelp to frame analysis of the text as social satire. Personified with the name Invidia, Envy wants what he cannothave, what he sees that others have: "whoso hath more than I angereth mesore."[xxxvi] Envy presages false witness and a host of other possiblecrimes. Wrath. Ryan notes the public nature of theconfessional content of the Seven Deadly Sins episode in the B text, whicharticulates "the individualization of seven of the components of whichWrong is made up."[xxix] It has also been noted that this episode occurs inthe wake of Reason's call for Repentance, i.e., Penance. [xx]Skeat, 114. Wilcockson sees a double irony in Glutton's action,signified by the fact that he is sidetracked specifically from going tochurch on Friday, a fasting day. What constituted medieval spirituality, on the other hand,was part of a culture of shared social values. But the point is thateach of the sins is covered. . [xxxvi]Langland, Book, 36. That is very much the case, in Ryan'sview. [lix]Langland, 82. The carousing that ensues is a version ofa black mass, a parody that is also a kind of sacrilege of the devotionalceremony. [xxxv]Ryan, citing text C, after Skeat,, 76. Ryan's view of this presentation is that it deals inexaggeration and an inability to feel bad about covetousness. [lvii]Ibid. [xxxiv]Langland, Book, 35. [v]Ibid., 149. [lii]Alan J. P. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc., 1991.Colish, Marcia L. New York, E. Ryan sees the figure of Gula or Glutton as the most "vividlyconceived and fully realized"[xl] of the sins. Further, thedistinction is elaborated with reference to religion--more exactly thepejorative use churchmen make of meed, the work-for-hire payment that isonly just for poor men to receive, and the hint that God's judgment,declared in the Bible as the withholding of salvation, a subject of concernto king and commoner alike, will go against those who take meed as bribery: And he that graspeth her [Meed's] gold so me God help! Edited by Rachel Attwater. Wycliffewas accused of (but not prosecuted as a heretic for) allowing thescriptures to be "trodden underfoot by swine."[xviii] The Bible appeared intwo versions. He cites Chaucer's views of ahighly imperfect and corrupt Church (witness the figures of the Summonerand Pardoner) to Langland's "vision of apocalyptic doom."[lxiv] Suchevaluations of Langland's work--with satire leavened by bitterness andearnestness--suggest that he was working feverishly at the project ofreform of the society governed by the Church and of the Church that hadpositioned itself at the head of society, attempting in his way to call theconscience of the Church before revolutionists and reformists, without atrace of irony or satire, set up agendas of their own and transfigured theage of belief into something quite different for Europe. Pigg cites a specific reference to the Lollardsin the C text in the opening lines of the Seven Deadly Sins passage, inwhich the dreamer acknowledges that he dresses as poor as a Lollard butadds that he has made fun of them in the past.[xix] The theme of clerical and political profligacy, both spiritual andmaterial, dominates Piers Plowman. [xxx]Pigg, 429. This prepares the way for the first entry of Piers thePlowman as a character. 6th ed. [liii]Ibid., 35 . [xl]Ibid., 79. Skeat. Colish, "Medieval Allegory: A HistoriographicalConsideration," CLIO 4 (June 1975): passim. a set of presuppositions and concepts he cannot share, and methods he cannot understand. Introduction. [xliii]Wilcockson, 176. Sloth entails selective effort; he knows tales of Robin Hood byheart but can't be bothered to learn the Paternoster.[xlv] To the degreePiers Plowman is about laxity, it is spiritual laxity that is of concern tothe author, and it is such laziness that makes sloth count as a deadly sin.But just as Pride prefigures other sins such as Avarice, Sloth overlaps andconverges with other deadly sins. [lvi]Ibid., 356. The text says he "blew with thebugle at his backbone's end,"[xlii] which Wilcockson takes to referindirectly to the blowing of the trumpet at the last judgment: "But thehorn-call in the grotesque parody is not blown by an angel. vii-xlvii.Stanley, E.G. In that regard,Skeat cites the "extreme earnestness of our author and the obvioustruthfulness and blunt honesty of his character," which have the effect oflending "real insight into the inner every-day life of the people, theirdress, their diet, their wages . A thousand sinnerssuddenly appear, all eager to locate Truth and none having a clue where tobegin looking. [xliv]Ryan, 82. [lx]Ryan, 89. That iswhy it is equally important in Conscience's instruction to the king to notethe distinction, in the king's behalf, between the two meanings of meed ina way that moves toward an appeal--successful, as it turns out in theopening lines of Passus IV--for the royal embrace of Reason. [xi]Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in theSpirituality of the High Middle Ages (Los Angeles: University of CaliforniaPress, 1982), 3. [xxix]Ryan, 73. One must also appreciate the context of faith and disillusionmentwith men supposedly of faith from which philosophy and poetry of the periodproceeded, even if the poetic content fails to reach modern philosophicalor theological meanings. This has implications forhow medieval commentary, whether poetic or discursive, on spiritualquestions, should be understood: Thirty or forty years ago, books on the history of medieval spirituality were surveys of various theories of the stages of the soul's ascent to contemplation or union. . Whether Piers is sowing,threshing, digging, weaving--and despite his status as a poor man--he iswell acquainted with Truth, who "is the readiest payer that a poor manknoweth."[xxviii] Comedy and satire, or at any rate Langland's awareness of therelevance of Piers Plowman to prevailing social praxis, have beenparticularly identified in Passus V. Ryan sees a comic effect inthe question that Repentance asks Sloth about whether he has repented;Sloth swoons, the question having "prove[n] too much for Sloth's delicateresistance."[xlvii] In the B text, Sloth rouses himself sufficiently to vowto mend his ways.[xlviii] The confessional portion of Passus V is succeeded by Repentance'sexhortation to all sinners to repent and find Truth. But once he has gauged the distance and appreciated the reasons behind it, the reader will begin to understand how, if he (or a modern philosopher) shared the training, assumptions and aims of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century scholars, he would approach the problems which interest him now by posing the sorts of questions which medieval thinkers asked and answering them using the techniques which they favoured.[viii] To put it another way, the intellectual climate in which ideas emergedin the Middle Ages can be instructive in sharpening an appreciation ofspecific ideas in such works as Piers Plowman. . Without this defining structure, the student of medieval thoughtin general and the reader of medieval poetry in particular might be misledinto sorting through rather dense and precious philosophical arguments ontheir merits, without due consideration given to the intellectualenvironment in which the arguments were put forward. The all-embracing importance of faith as adriving principle of society appears to have brought out a hunger forprinciples of integrity properly applied that could not be concealed behindhumor but had to be articulated in earnest. [xiii]Skeat, xxviii. V. [xxvi]Ibid., 31. [xix]Pigg, 378. [x]Marcia L. [xvii]Attwater, v. The plan of theresearch will be to set forth the historical context and literary historysurrounding the production of Piers Plowman and then to discuss the patternof ideas and narrative devices in the text that tend to support the viewthat it is structured in a way meant to comment on society and the socialbehavior familiar and important to Langland, namely, a society in which themost important feature of the quality of life was the quality of faith, orthe individual's experience of God. Peter.The startling entrance and self-assurance with which Piers declares hisfamiliarity with Truth have the effect of positioning Piers as the level-headed hero of the dream. because of the tales he has told, there is only one refuge for him--with the pardoners. Even the figure of the king,who conveniently pops in and out of the dreamer's account, and who wouldhave been identified with Richard II instead of Edward III by the time ofthe appearance of text C, goes unnamed. But of the lot the pardoners aremost strongly criticized because of the social benefits they receive. . S. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1891. . Conscience proceeds to challengethe king, or as Ryan has it, instruct the king, "who listens humbly, in theduties of the crown, the evils inherent in Meed, and the importance ofReason."[xxiv] Ryan identifies Langland's king with Edward III and statesthat Langland was a royalist, though aware of royal fallibility. Skeatquotes at length a scholar named Marsh to the effect that all popularwriters are a product of their country, age, intellect, moral sentiment,and prevailing social opinion. The Book Concerning Piers the Plowman. Priests and parsons that pleasure desire And take meed and money for the masses they sing, Receive their meed here as Matthew us teacheth: . Itwould entail moral corruption of Conscience in general and the corruptionof individual men--most of them in a position of wealth and/orpolitical/social power--in particular. This is not a clever way of avoiding the content of the argumentsthemselves, but it seems useful to point out that knowing that philosophersand theologians worked from a social and political agenda to arrive at theincorrigibility of an abstract argument can facilitate appreciation of sucharguments. [xxxviii]Ibid., 76. The poem develops the idea that salvation,contrition, and grace are far more to be preferred. [li]Ibid., 55. If one has little enough tolearn from the content of such ideas as the dreamer's observation that thefriars are "preaching to the people for profit to themselves, / Explainingthe Gospel just as they liked, / To get clothes for themselves theyconstrued it as they would,"[ix] one can nevertheless appreciate that themedieval intellectual and social environment was subject to scrutiny andcritique. Brewer, 1995), xv. P. . The rulewas sanctioned by Aquinas and other commentators of the period, and itappears to have functioned at least in part as an instrument of socialcontrol. [xvi]Daniel F. There is never an ill word for hewes (workmen); indeed, they are praised many times over. This new . [ix]Langland, Book, Prologue, 2. Skeat (Oxford,England: Clarendon Pressa 1891), xi; Rachel Attwater, Introduction, TheBook Concerning Piers the Plowman, by William Langland, trans. Kindly Similitude: Marriage and Family in Piers Plowman. Piers's first word is an exclamation, "Peter!"According to Skeat, that is a shortened form of swearing "by" St. Ryan detects Langland's antifeminism in the stereotypicalcommonplace that "women's tongues and tempers are worse thanmen's."[xxxviii] Avarice. Skeat, Introduction, The Vision of William ConcerningPiers the Plowman, William Langland, 6th ed., ed. . The refusal does notstand for a criticism of marriage or a throwback to the Pauline idea (ICor. . . When Liar is hooted out of houses . [liv]Langland, 52, 53. [xxxix]Ibid., 78. But it is rather thenature of this specific marriage that Conscience finds reprehensible. Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages. This is the situation at the opening of Passus VI, in whichPiers's family is introduced. In Passus VII, Fletcher notes, a priest marvels at Piers'swisdom and preaching ability.[lvi] This is decisive as well for the nisustoward deity that Piers assumes, as with each succeeding appearance hebroaches identification with Christ. Fletcher, "The Social Trinity of Piers Plowman," Reviewof English Studies 44 (August 1993): 348. Freemantle notes that in the middle of the 13th centurytheologian Thomas Aquinas came under an intellectual cloud by religiousrivals in the Church,[v] though he outlasted them and was canonized within1 years of his death. [lv]Fletcher, 352. He identifies glutton-led-astray literary and "homiletic"motifs that precede Piers Plowman and that would likely have been familiarto Langland.[xli] He pisses a paternoster and makes a series ofscatological sounds that function as an irreverent proxy for theconsecration and communion of the mass. The direct connection between Piers and Truth leads tothe quest for truth via the figures of Do-Well (live a pious and charitableindividual life), Do-Better (spread the Word of God as the Churchteaches),[lix] and Do-Best (work in the church to save souls, much in themanner of Christ). The ultimate effect of such a critical stance wouldbe to make any analysis more objective, more neutral toward values, lookingat what they are rather than what they are not or should have been. [xv]Colin Wilcockson, "Glutton's Black Mass: 'Piers Plowman,' B-Text,Passus V 297-385," Notes and Queries 45 (June 1998): 174. 1957.Langland, William. [xviii]Robert McCrum, William Cran, and Robert MacNeil, The Story ofEnglish (London: Penguin Books, 1986), 11 ). The Age of Belief: The Medieval Philosophers. Ryan, William Langland (New York, Twayne Publishers,1968), 23. The Book Concerning Piers the Plowman. Donald andRachel Attwater, ed. [xiv]Skeat, xxi. It is but a step towardmendicant friars who conceal their love of and indulgence in riches andavoid doing any honest work in the process by conning the rest of the worldinto giving them money. As Fletcher continues: The only estate omitted from their exchange is that of the Church, or so it would seem. New York: New American Library, 1954.Fremantle, Anne. Skeat's comment is that in texts A, B, and C this sinis treated with brevity and is mainly a cautionary temperance tale: "Drinkbut with the duck and dine only once."[xxxiv] In the B text, Lecheryfollows Pride, but in the C text it comes fourth, after Envy and Wrath, andRyan quotes a passage that focuses less on temperate alcohol use than on arecord of intemperate and continual preoccupation with dirty stories butespecially of predatory sexuality: Excitynge oure aither other til oure olde synne; Sotilede [invented] songes and sende out olde baudes For to wynne to my wil wommen with gyle By sorcerye som tyme and som tyme by maistrye.[xxxv]Whereupon he proceeds to ask for mercy; there is a sensibility of bothregret and longing for the vicissitudes of indulging one's vices. [vii]Skeat, xxx. . In other words, bishops as wellas friars come in for criticism, and they can take care of their troublesthemselves. P. She [Meed] leadeth the law as she list and law-days maketh, And makes men lose through her love that the law may win; A poor person's perplexed though he plead for ever. 1957),v. Paul himself declares thatit is better to marry than to burn, and that same sentiment is echoed inPassus I of Langland's work, in which no less an authority than Holy Churchherself declares that "Chastity without charity shall be chained inhell."[xxii] This means that marriage, of which Piers later heartilyapproves, is to be commended to good Christians. [lxii]Ibid., 94. [xxiv]Ryan, 72. [xlix]Ibid., 49. Conscience's refusal to marry Lady Meed, an allegoricalpersonification of bribery according to Skeat[xx] and reward that need notnecessarily be bribery according to Attwater,[xxi] is a study in theprevalance of the contrasts of closely held values. Indeed, if a definitecommitment to taking all the risks necessary to function productively inthe everyday world is a theme of Piers Plowman, then it follows that anycharacter or group that failed in this fundamental human enterprise wouldbe likely to come in for criticism. Once sidetracked from massand confession into the inn, Glutton literally makes a pig of himself,drinking, eating, singing loud songs, occasionally relieving himself, andfinally, filled as much with remorse as with food and drink, resolves to dobetter next time. Pigg, "Figuring Subjectivity in 'Piers Plowman C' and'The Parson's Tale' and 'Retraction': Authorial Insertion and IdentityPoetics," Style 31 (Fall 1997): 428. Her view is that even inthe 2 th century, literary critics of medieval allegory fall intorationalist or romantic schools, and she advocates looking at the allegoryin historical context, as a feature of its time and suited to its timerather than a feature illustrative of the imperfections of the time and theimmaturity of the form.[x] From Colish's standpoint, an appropriate critical approach would be tolook at what a given allegory reveals about the time in which it wasproduced and about literary forms more generally, rather than to start froma moral or political position on the failings of the early period to bemodernist in outlook. Recently the history of spirituality has come to mean something quite different: the study of how basic religious attitudes and values are conditioned by the society within which they occur. . Despite evidence of Langland's criticism of a churchin which pardons for sins can be purchased by rich lawyers from corruptchurchmen,[vi] there is in Piers Plowman perhaps only a poetical hint thatthe church as it has evolved in England is doomed. Colish's discussion of the historiography of literary criticism ofmedieval allegorical tales from the Enlightenment, through the Victorianera, and into the modern period, notes the philosophical hostility ofEnlightenment rationalism toward the faith-based Middle Ages on one hand,and the tendency of Victorian criticism to diminish the allegoricalliterary form in comparison with the presumptively more elegant and refinedsymbological literary forms of the 19th century. . Later Medieval Philosophy (115 -135 ). . Skeatdoes find resonance between the work (at least the C text) and a secularpolitical revolt of 1381, Wat Tyler's Rebellion, which involved peasantsprotesting against a poll tax and presaged the abdication of RichardII.[vii] In any case, Holy Church personified functions as the dreamer's guidethrough the course of the overall dream. [xxxi]Ryan, 73. he is pulled, not merely invited, "to house," washed and wiped and wound in clouts, and then sent with seals, or pardons, to church, where he is paid "pound-meel a- boute" (by pounds at a time). The knight recognizes Piers's authority, and in so doing ratifies his own, when he invites Piers to instruct him.[liii]And there is, indeed, a direct reference to the fact that Piers will laborgladly for the knight but not for jugglers, wasters, bawds, or "all lyingfriars and folk of their order . For Holy Church of their like is toldo tithe to take."[liv] This does not mean that Piers Plowman is advocatinga secular rather than religious society. . Envy. New York, E. He is thus able to make a good confession--the best of the lot, in fact--and to look when he is sober to possible salvation, and to do so with Langland's blessing.[xliv] Sloth. This section of the work makes liberal use ofwordplay with characters' names, and the names themselves connote thesocial class to which the characters belong and the inevitable fate of thecourse of their lives. In an imagined community of pardoners . . [viii]Marenbon, 191. Walter W. [xxv]Langland, 23. Skeat. Edited by Rev. Walter W. The content of PiersPlowman, in that view, becomes less important to Marenbon than the contextin which it emerged. Inventing the Middle Ages: The Lives, Works, and Ideas of the Great Medievalists of the Twentieth Century. Rachel Attwater (New York, E. Piers's protean changes often occur, therefore, in terms of elisions between the three estates, and the way he is presented in one of the earliest of his appearances, as in Passus VI where Piers the Ploughman, via a preacher's discourse, foreshadows Piers the Priest, is already anticipating the more famous, because to the modern mind more startling, collapses of the ploughman persona that occur later in the poem, chiefly in Passus XVIII and XIX. [xlv]Ibid., 43. "The Social Trinity of Piers Plowman." Review of English Studies 44 (August 1993): 343-62.Fremantle, Anne. a modern reader begins to read a medieval discussion of intellectual knowledge, he will probably find that an initial feeling of familiarity with the questions and ways of arguing is gradually replaced by . It helps to know, for example, that medieval intellectuals were,during the period Fremantle describes as the age of belief,[iv] preoccupiedwith Aristotelian metaphysics and the myriad nuances of faith-versus-reasondiscourse. This research examines William Langland's 14th-century extendednarrative poem The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman (akaPiers Plowman) as a poetic exercise in social satire. He is willing to function as a guide but has to plow afield first. Dutton & Co. Reasoning, as Marenbon describes it, has to be understood as thecognitive and sociological frame within which specific ideas weredeveloped. A Mentor Book. In that connection, Wilcockson considers the tavern, whereGlutton "worships," to be a parody of the church, where worship properlytakes place. In Piers Plowman, the repentance of the deadly sins is undertakenin public, at more length in text C than in text B. Edited by Rev. Walter W. H is the prototype of all those fascinating scoundrels who people literature as well as the real world. A corollary theme is that of socialinjustice, for the privilege of the wealthy highlights the enormous povertyand deprivation of the great mass of humanity. Such criticism is to be contrasted with the serious concernthat Langland has "for the little people, mistreated by their betters butchosen by Christ as His own." He continues: Their poverty is a condition necessary for salvation: long, hard hours of work keep one out of mischief. Edited by Rachel Attwater. [xlviii]Langland, 44-5. The first was a nonidiomatic transliteration of the LatinVulgate and the second, more idiomatic version, was controversial becauseof interpolations in the text made by Wycliffe's followers, known as "poorpriests" or Lollards, who used the text much as Langland used his, toviolently deplore the wealth of high churchmen and the poverty of almosteveryone else in England. However, Skeat comments on the fact that Pride ispersonified, uniquely among the seven, as a woman because of the referenceto the extravagance of dress, "to repress which a special Statute waspassed in 1363."[xxxiii] The larger point is that Pride is more or less theprovenance of all the sins that follow. Shall abide it bitterly or the Book lieth! It remains for the human being of multiplequalities to show them where Truth is to be found. That which labourers and low folk take of their masters Is in no manner meed but a moderate hire.[xxv]The social and civil implications of an appropriate attitude toward moneyare driven home in the narrative of Passus IV, when Conscience hasexhausted its argument and the king has sent for Reason as the basis forrule for king and Parliament alike. He has his clear moments, his periods of remission during which he sees with clarity the wages of self-corruption. [xli]Wilcockson, 173. London: Penguin Books, 1986.Pigg, Daniel F. Dutton & Co. In the early part of the text, Lady Meed attempts to defend andjustify herself, taking upon herself the meaning of reward, such as thekind given by kings to loyal servants and vassals, a sentiment with whichthe king, who has meed to dispense agrees. Pride. Secretly, we approve skulduggery of a fairly harmless order and admire the nonconforming type who slips past convention and law and uses a new trick to make a profit.[xxxix] Gluttony. Bad as he is, Glutton is an occasional sinner; that is, he may sin once a day but not every waking hour of all of his days, as Envy and Avarice do. When, as early as Passus VI, Piers broaches the priestly prerogative of preaching, his epiphanies are already under way.[lvii] The dreamer/poet's absorption of the lessons of Piers for the knightand against the indolent of the world constitutes the main action of PassusVII, which begins with Truth's (God's) absolution of Piers and family adinfinitum, a well as "all living labourers that live by their hands / Andtake the just wages they honestly earn."[lviii] The same does not apply tobeggars and layouts. Ryan says that Envy's rejoinder is to hastily beg forimprovement,[xxxvii] thus confirming the stereotype. [xxxii]Langland, Book, 34. Wilcockson notes[xlvi] that Glutton getsan attack of sloth when he collapses and spends Saturday and Sundaysleeping off the effects of Friday's behavior. 7) that, consistent with anticipation of the impending apocalypse,celibacy is better than resort to fornication. Dutton &Co. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982.Cantor, Norman F. In Passus V, which presents the wish for repentance on the part of theSeven Deadly Sins (Pride, Lechery, Envy, Anger (Wrath), Avarice, Gluttony,and Sloth), the characters in some manifestation of the relevant Sin, aretransformed into pilgrims in search of Truth, which is God. Ryanseems puzzled that Langland should "eulogize" cloister and school as aheaven on earth and then "castigate" monks who go into business. Rachel Attwater (New York, E. But Henry VIII'sdramatic break with Rome was more than 1 years away in 1362-137 . which picture to us what manner of enthey were."[xiii] Langland's perceptions from texts A through C are widely regarded ascontaining a significant level of contemporaneous social critique. The Vision of Piers Ploughman thus derives its interest, not from the absolute novelty of its revelations, but partly from its literary form, partly from the moral and social bearings of its subject--the corruptions of the nobility and of the several departments of the government, the vices of the clergy and the abuses of the church.[xiv]The content of the critique has been connected with the appearance of atranslation of the Bible into English by John Wycliffe,[xv] which thatappeared in the 138 s. P. . Piers's wife is called Dame Work-while-time-is; hisdaughter Do-right-so-or-thy-dame-shall-thee-beat; his son Suffer-thy-sovereigns-to-have-their-will-Judge-them-not-for-if-thou-dost-thou-shalt-it-dearly-rue.[li] Such names suggest lives circumscribed by social rules.Fletcher sees social sensibility at work in the exchange between Piers andthe knight in Passus VI, which he says "turns upon the instruction of amember of the upper classes by a member of the lower: the implication seemsto be that the personal righteousness of the working-class ploughmanjustifies him in instructing his social superior."[lii] Fletcher adds thatthere is implicit social criticism in the passage, which has Piers of thelower estate complaining to the upper estate about the wasters, beggars,and others who want the benefits of labor but do not want to do any work.There is, however, a third estate, comprising the clergy, which isrepeatedly a target of criticism in Piers Plowman. [xlvii]Ryan, 85. [xxi]Attwater, 2 2. "Glutton's Black Mass: 'Piers Plowman,' B-Text, Passus V 297-385." Notes and Queries 45 (June 1998): 173-6.----------------------- Notes [i]John Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy (115 -135 ) (New York:Routledge, 1991), 1. . "Figuring Subjectivity in 'Piers Plowman C' and 'The Parson's Tale' and 'Retraction': Authorial Insertion and Identity Poetics." Style 31 (Fall 1997): 428-39.Ryan, William M. Not only that, Piers reminds theknight "that death confounds all class distinctions."[lv] More generally,as Fletcher says, the tone that Piers takes with the knight is reminiscentof the authoritative tone that clergymen would have taken with theirparishioners. All the while he bemoans his guilt and promises to do better.In that regard, Ryan takes the view that there may be hope for Glutton thatis not necessarily available to those guilty of the other sins. . It is difficult to see social satire emerging in thegradual deification of Piers, except in the contrast between the common manwho makes good by doing the best he can in the world and the persistentimages of a morally corrupt and money-hungry clergy. It does mean that ordinary humanbeings are perfectly capable of recognizing and distinguishing betweenappropriate modules of human experience. He cites the attacks on hermits or anchorites in the Prologue, whocome off no better than beggars and layouts. "The Manuscripts of 'Piers Plowman.'" Medium Aevum 68 (Fall 1999): 322.Skeat, Walter W., Rev. Introduction. William Langland. While the specific injunctions ofPiers Plowman are of course important to note in order to identify examplesof social satire and social critique, the specific content of the argumentseems not to be the ultimate factor of analysis: The intellectual climateof the Middle Ages is. Chaucer's satire often raises a good-humoured laugh; but William's is that of a man who is constrained to speak out all the bitter truth, and it is as earnest as is the cry of an injured man who appeals to Heaven for vengeance.[lxiii] Pigg also compares Chaucer and Langland. Furtherto this point, Bynum examines the culture of spirituality in the MiddleAges, explaining that the very term spirituality was a Victorian-cultureconstruction. The C text of Piers Plowman has been dated between1381 and 1387,[xvi] or at 1398.[xvii] What was important about Wycliffe'stranslation was that in the 14th century the prevailing view was thatBiblical language should not be made accessible to ordinary folk. [vi]William Langland, The Book Concerning Piers the Plowman, trans.Donald and Rachel Attwater, ed. New York, Twayne Publishers, 1968.Schmidt, A. Teresa Tavormina, Kindly Similitude: Marriage And Family InPiers Plowman (ambridge: D. This figure is anger-as-vehemence, for no amount of retributionfor real or imagined slights and no amount of mischief-making via lies andcalumny, especially among women who snipe at one another, will ever besufficient. The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman. "I fall in with florins," says one, "and then myspeech fails."[xxvi] Despite the one-dimensional nature of the allegorical characters, thedevice of personification of specific traits of human behavior, qualities,emotions, and relative states of grace (as in the Seven Deadly Sins)enables Langland to address issues directly without attributing them toindividual living persons, however imaginary. . "Piers Plowman: The C Version--Will's Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best." Notes and Queries 46 (March 1999): 1 1-6.Tavormina, M. Ryan continues: Avarice resembles the precarious living-by-wits of a confidence man, and the reader recognizes the type instantly and smiles at hi. [l]Ibid., 5 . New York: New American Library, 1954.Langland, William. Citing text C, Ryan explains that Pride is extravagantlyboastful of her sin, promising (publicly) to don a hairshirt that she neveractually puts on: "By her own account, she is a busy talker who usuallylies."[xxxi] In text B, Pride boasts of her self-hatred, also boasting thatshe will henceforth be meek.[xxxii] Such an irony functions as its ownsatire of human behavior. S. "Medieval Allegory: A Historiographical Consideration." CLIO 4 (June 1975): 341-355.Fletcher, Alan J. And ifthat is not satire on well-observed asocial human behavior, perhapsespecially among the corrupt clergy, it is difficult to see what else itcould be. C. So greedy,indeed, is Avarice that he would rob the church of its sacramentals to layhold of its gold, that he has lied glibly to obtain worldly goods ofothers. The Age of Belief: The Medieval Philosophers. In that regard,Pigg notes that in 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council required at least once-yearly reception of the sacrament of Penance,[xxx] with absolution puttingthe penitent in the state of grace, thus enabling him to fulfill anotherrequirement: to receive the Eucharist during the Easter season. [xlvi]Wilcockson, 177. [xxviii]Ibid., 47. [xlii]Langland, 42. Cambridge: D. Teresa. Ryan cites Langland's lumping-together of priests,prelates, and preachers as hypocrites. It could be said, indeed,that money as a social--or most people's lack of it--is the dominantsubject of Piers Plowman, and that Piers Plowman is meant to function as acautionary tale against taking money and the pride it engenders in mankindas the primary social value. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1891.Marenbon, John. [xxii]Langland, Book, Passus I, 11. Brewer, 1995.Wilcockson, Colin. . For example,Gula the Glutton started the day with the good intention of going to massand confession but got sidetracked at a brewery, where any number of fellowvillagers are also engaged in drinking ale.[xxvii] At the end of Passus V,when Piers makes his first entrance, the principal distinction between himand the seekers after truth is that they are so committed, allegorically,to the "type" they represent that the text implies they would not recognizeTruth if they fell over it. However,there is a consistency at work, as Ryan points out, if engagement at theselevels is taken without hypocrisy: "In a church-oriented society [i.e.,during the age of belief] it should be true that the nearest thing toheaven is life within convent and cloister."[lxi] The fact that it is nottrue is the given that informs Piers's criticisms of clerical behavior, onboth an individual and institutional level. [lxi]Ibid., 9 . 6th ed. [xxiii]Langland, Book, Passus III, 22-3. 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