{"id":1326,"date":"2020-12-16T21:45:16","date_gmt":"2020-12-16T21:45:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/farefwd.com\/?p=1326"},"modified":"2020-12-27T02:00:12","modified_gmt":"2020-12-27T02:00:12","slug":"piers-plowman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/farefwd.com\/index.php\/2020\/12\/16\/piers-plowman\/","title":{"rendered":"Piers Plowman"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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Medieval Beckett: A Review of William Langland\u2019s Piers Plowman<\/h2>\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t
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Though on the surface confusing and fragmented, William Langland’s poem expose in both theme and form the struggles that Christians confronted in his own time–and still do in our own.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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By Chase Padusniak
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I first encountered William Langland\u2019s Piers Plowman <\/em>as a college freshman. The professor got up in front of the class and, in his meek way, confessed: \u201cI shouldn\u2019t be putting this on the syllabus, but I\u2019m going to anyway. Ninety-five percent of you will hate this book; for the remaining few, it will change your lives.\u201d<\/p>

Within a few months, I had decided to become a medievalist and that professor was my newly-minted adviser; the following year I was staying at school all summer, doing research on Piers<\/em>\u2014it captivated me.<\/p>

At first glance, this 7,000 and some-odd line poem isn\u2019t much to look at. Like much medieval literature it is religiously didactic and allegorical; it breaks off at seemingly random moments, leaving existing conflicts unresolved. Such frenetic fracturing is, at first, alienating, but, as we shall see, also its singular charm\u2014right down to its traditional alliterative verse, un-rhyming and occasionally incomplete, of a sort that makes Hopkins\u2019 sprung rhythm look like Victorian child\u2019s play. John Lawlor (a fan of the poem!) has admitted that Langland \u201cgives us thinking rather than thought.\u201d It\u2019s not hard to see what my teacher meant those years ago: who would willfully pick up such a poorly-knitted tangle of themes, barely held together by a series of religious fever dreams?<\/p>

Postmodern Christians in 2017, that\u2019s who. Piers <\/em>is undeniably an insane text, insofar as sanity implies an easily-discernible structure and digestible content. But that is a reflection of its historical context, one that, in spite of (more or less easily imaginable) differences, is analogous to our own. It remains not merely worth reading today but specifically important <\/em>to read today because it is a work of spiritual edification drafted in a past with disconcerting prefigurations of our present. Its feverish vision and enduring spirit strike eyes used to Beckett and Brecht, Tao Lin and David Foster Wallace, as eerily familiar, not as if broadcast across a half-millennium-plus of historical time. The poem thus teaches us to see across the chasm of the past in the name of spiritual and personal edification; its inscrutability reveals our own and testifies to the recurrence of certain spiritual struggles in disparate times. It is the poem\u2019s mysterious immediacy, its unaffected, homely foregrounding of religious struggle\u2014both formally and narratively\u2014that incites a desire for continued questioning, that elides the difference between now and then, between the ravaged society and corrupt Church of the fourteenth century and the 2017 of Rod Dreher\u2019s The Benedict Option<\/em>.<\/p>

The poem asks questions that are still with us: what is the role of Scripture in forming the Christian? Does the will have any place in salvation? What value has an external Church\u2014so bloated with corruption and scholastic indifference? Langland, who reworked the poem across several decades, passing three different versions down to us, never allows for an easy answer. His reformist tendencies and somewhat Ockhamist emphasis on the will (and Will is his own name as well as that of his main character) are subverted by long paeans to grace and humility. When his poem\u2019s titular figure was adopted as a sort of avatar or mascot by peasant rebels in 1381 (who themselves were, perhaps unfairly, associated with the radical reformist sect known as the Lollards), he edited the text so as to make his doctrinal orthodoxy clear, never forsaking his complex identification of Piers Plowman with (all at once!) St. Peter, the later popes, the Good Samaritan of Gospel fame, and even Christ. At the same time, he removed a shocking line\u2014 \u201cPetrus, id est, Christus<\/em>\u201d (B, XV, 212)\u2014in his final rewriting of the poem. A reformer in a time of both radical new ideas and conservative ecclesial decadence, Langland offers us his life\u2019s work as mystery that, if partly comprehensible, still calls out for answers.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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As one reads it, the text\u2019s mystery comes alive; you begin to penetrate its depths (and the mind of its author).<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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In order to help us at least get clarity on the questions, then, we ought to jump into the world of Piers Plowman <\/em>itself. Finished (in its third and final version) around 1388, the poem was written during a time of deep uncertainty in medieval England. It was a society that was, in fact, just about to stop being straightforwardly medieval. Forty years earlier, the Black Death had ravaged the countryside, killing 40 to 60 percent of the population. In its aftermath, a new political order emerged as wage labor became a more convenient employment option (a reduction in the number of farm laborers encouraged peasants to leave subsistence farming behind and compete for wages, rather than remain bound to particular landed manors) and as the merchant class jostled for political power. The death of the long-reigning Edward III in 1377 launched the kingdom into an uncertain future under the child king Richard II. As noted above, in 1381, the workers and merchants rose up against their masters in the Peasants\u2019 Revolt, which devastated and shocked the land\u2014the rebels entered the Tower of London, executed the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord High Treasurer, and proceeded (some 400 years before the storming of the Bastille) to release prisoners from a local jail and loot the royal premises.<\/p>

Soon peace was restored, but there was trouble again in 1388: the \u201cMerciless Parliament\u201d took affairs into its own hands, executed several major officials, and effectively grabbed power from Richard II. The next decade was characterized by constant political struggle until Richard was deposed in 1399. And that\u2019s just in England\u2014the Church throughout Europe\u00a0 was afflicted by the removal of the papacy to Avignon; by rampant corruption; conflict with secular power; the founding of new orders with their unsupervised, peripatetic friars, whose itinerant nature often led to conflicts with diocesan clergy, and a general sense of nigh-apocalyptic doom.<\/p>

It is from this fractured milieu that the poem takes its central concerns and its unusual form. As one reads it, the text\u2019s mystery comes alive; you begin to penetrate its depths (and the mind of its author). Langland spent his life \u2014what we know of it\u2014obsessed with the question of how a Christian could live in a world so broken by sin and folly.\u00a0 He wanted to know how the individual believer could go on; he wanted to know too how society itself could reflect anything like the tenets of the Faith. These were the questions that he wrestled with as he spent twenty\u00a0 years feverishly writing and rewriting Piers<\/em>, developing its chaotic form as a reflection of the multiplicity and confusion of his lived experience. A friend of mine once called Piers Plowman <\/em>\u201cmedieval Beckett,\u201d and for good reason; it is no coincidence that recursive questing and hodgepodge as form emerge in moments of social and spiritual crisis.<\/p>

Langland divides the poem into two halves: the first seeks to understand whether a top-down approach to spiritual and social growth is possible, that is, whether or not the principles of Christianity can take root in a culture torn apart by an emerging wage labor economy and the very beginnings of what would be capitalism, by political violence, and by deep division\u2014a corrupt Church, the \u201cBabylonian Captivity\u201d a the papal court moved to Avignon, and the continual struggle between newly-empowered secular authorities and politically-savvy ecclesiastics. Langland\u2019s verdict: It can\u2019t.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Like many medieval texts, Piers <\/em>is an allegorical dream vision, meaning that the tale is told through a series of experiences in which a dreamer encounters various figures that represent particular ideas or themes.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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The second half of the poem emerges from the failed venture of the first, and retreats inward, asking how it is that a Christian can live in the world at all, how a devout person can even begin to reflect the tenets of a seemingly impossible religion rooted in a call to achieve perfection analogous to God\u2019s perfection. With these two halves in mind, perhaps we can make some sense of the composite forms buried within the text, and sort out how a poem can be \u201can amalgam of Blake\u2019s Prophetic Books<\/em>, Wordsworth\u2019s The Prelude<\/em>, and Eliot\u2019s Four Quartets,<\/em>\u201d as Derek Pearsall, one of Langland\u2019s most recent major editors and commentators, notes with some glee.<\/p>

Like many medieval texts, Piers <\/em>is an allegorical dream vision, meaning that the tale is told through a series of experiences in which a dreamer encounters various figures that represent particular ideas or themes. In the first few pages of the poem, the Dreamer\u2014Will, the poem\u2019s protagonist\u2014finds himself in a \u201cfair feld ful of folk\u201d (C.P.17a) poised between a tower and a dungeon (heaven and hell). The folk are all of us\u2014the people of the world, in the middle of, but often unaware of, the struggle going on for our souls. In ignorance but desiring to understand what this vision means, he comes upon Holy Church, who, despite her incredible erudition, speaks in too incomprehensible a language. She leaves him in utter confusion, unwilling or unable to explain herself any better. And so the poem begins.<\/p>

Before he has any idea what\u2019s going on, Will (who, unsurprisingly, represents the human faculty of the will, trying to navigate the world) finds himself in all manner of places, including at the king\u2019s palace, where those present attempt to determine who Meed (reward) should marry. Does she belong with the traditional and loyal knights? How about with the usurious merchants? One group is fading from history, of course, but the other is condemned by the Church. At the same time, even if the usurious option is bad, it at least gets men a living\u2014reward is, after all, central to justice. Then, for good measure, Langland throws in a beast fable about a little society of mice trying to determine whether they should try to put a bell on a cat in order to stop themselves from being eaten. And all of this in dreams. Obscure as these visions may be, he intends them to teach us a lesson about human reason and action as well as their limits.<\/p>

The first half of the poem seems to be guaranteeing the possibility of a just society: Meed doesn\u2019t end up in wicked circumstances (though she is characterized as something of a prostitute, since she is willing to reward the man deemed \u201cworthy,\u201d and worth is not necessarily tied to moral considerations).<\/p>

But this optimistic vision quickly comes to an end when the titular character, Piers the Ploughman, shows up and tries to whip society into shape. Contrition (yes, that\u2019s a character\u2019s name) gets the Seven Deadly Sins to confess (in very comical fashion), but they rapidly return to their old ways. Piers (the name is a variant on Peter), troubled by the lapse in discipline, invites Hunger to force people to work so that society can function and everyone can be fed (Langland has a nearly Dorothy Day-like concern for the poor). Hunger (obligingly) makes everyone hungry, but this does nothing to transform the lazy, and the first sequence of dreams ends in dire confusion, with the hope for a Christian society predicated on justice for the poor totally quashed.<\/p>

The failure of the outward quest leads Will to recognize that, in order to transform the world around oneself, one must first look within; one must, as the poem puts it, learn to \u201cdo well.\u201d Thus the second half of the poem presents a bizarre series of images and allegories: the Dreamer, in his human stupidity, thinks \u201cdo well\u201d is a person and not an idea (thus ironizing allegory itself!) and falls prey to Fortune, who leads him into a deviant life, in which he cherry picks from Scripture in order to justify his newfound, acedia<\/em>-ridden despair. The Roman emperor Trajan comes back from the dead to attack studiousness and scholarship. And, after many other adventures, Will eventually meets with a series of characters representing internal faculties that must be reformed (such as Imagination). Before you know it he finds himself in dreams within dreams, watching Jesus joust with Satan, and, in the end, needing to defend the Barn of Unity (the Church) against the forces of Antichrist, peopled by giants, the Seven Deadly Sins, and even wayward friars.<\/p><\/div>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t

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Langland seeks to represent the multifaceted nature of Christian life in a world that seems\u2014for reasons social, economic, political, and personal\u2014to be unable to tolerate a robust concern for the poor rooted in a deep faith.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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If that all seems a bit confusing, that\u2019s because it is, and it is precisely because life itself is a journey toward truth filled with false starts, competing influences, and constant social pressure to avoid introspection and contemplation. The poem\u2019s form is intentionally variegated\u2014 a variety not unlike, though more ambiguous than, the \u201cpied beauty\u201d of Hopkins\u2019 famous poem. Langland seeks to represent the multifaceted nature of Christian life in a world that seems\u2014for reasons social, economic, political, and personal\u2014to be unable to tolerate a robust concern for the poor rooted in a deep faith. Experiencing the delight of Piers <\/em>is always an inward journey and a call to self-reflection, because, while reading it, each of us can recognize the echo of Langland\u2019s voice across history, calling out to us to continue what he would call \u201cthe pilgrimage to Saint Truth,\u201d that is, the quest for meaning and sense amidst a fallen and broken world.<\/p>

Though Piers\u2019 original attempt to reform the world has, seemingly, failed, it is in him that the Dreamer, Will, apparently continues to hope. Piers had, earlier in the poem, said that he would himself become such a quester, and be with those who were on the quest:<\/p>

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“And I shal apparaille me,’ quod Perkyn, “in pilgrymes wise<\/p>

And wende with yow I wile til we fynde Truthe.’<\/p>

[He] caste on [hise] clothes, yclouted and hole,<\/p>

[Hise] cokeres and [hise] coffes for coId of [hise] nailes,<\/p>

And [heng his] hoper at [his] hals in stede of a scryppe:<\/p>

“A busshel of bred corn brynge me therinne,<\/p>

For I wol sowe it myself, and sithenes wol I wende<\/p>

To pilgrymage as palmeres doon, pardon for to have.<\/p>

And whoso helpeth me to erie or sowen here er I wende,<\/p>

Shal have leve, by Oure Lord, to lese here in hervest<\/p>

And make hym murie thermyd, maugree whoso bigruccheth it.<\/p>

The companionship in the quest for Truth, and the \u201cpardon\u201d that Piers receives from Truth early on, which he was to pass on to penitents, seem to reach beyond the failure of the initial reform. Will can\u2019t shake his original vision. In the final dream, Conscience declares that he too,<\/p>

\u201c…wole bicome a pilgrym,<\/p>

And walken as wide as the world lasteth,<\/p>

To seken Piers the Plowman, that Pryde myghte destruye<\/p>

… Now Kynde me avenge,<\/p>

And sende me hap and heele, til I have Piers the Plowman!\u201d<\/p>

The journey is not over, and the lesson is not simple. The pardon, originally, had not been enough, given too little guidance: it had seemed to offer insufficient hope for that fair field full of folk; in fact, in the first two versions of the poem, Piers tears it up. It is as though all Christians in the poem are struggling to understand the basis on which Christians can hope. That basis, even at the end, remains mysterious\u2014 except that the solution, clearly related to a continued openness to God\u2019s love, is bound up in the quest to seek Piers, to do as Conscience does, and \u201cgreete [cry] after grace.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>

Are our circumstances so different from those of Langland? As of yet, rebels haven\u2019t broken into the White House and taken prisoners; tax officials have not been summarily executed by an angry mob. But even as events change, history returns us to past anxieties in different forms\u2014the \u201cnothing new under the sun\u201d of Qoheleth and the eternal recurrence of Nietzsche in the saeculum <\/em>that, Langland reminds us, will be renewed only by an end times to be awaited and hoped for, but never complacently expected. In moments of transformation, Piers <\/em>takes on renewed personal and social import. Written when early capitalists began to accumulate wealth such that the feudal system could slowly vanish from history, the poem finds us in a time when capitalism and liberalism are pummeled on all sides. We find ourselves, perhaps, at end of an era inaugurated in Langland\u2019s own day. What will Christians do? How will we respond? Certainly there is no easy answer, but I suspect that in the next few years my professor may be proved wrong\u2014Piers Plowman <\/em>may find a renewed audience, transforming more readers than Langland ever could have imagined.<\/p>

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Chase Padusniak<\/strong> was born in New Jersey and currently lives between Princeton, where he is a PhD candidate in the English Department, and his hometown of Garwood, though he’s hoping to move to New York or Philadelphia soon. Aside from his academic work on medieval mysticism and contemporary critical theory, Chase writes short fiction and poetry. He tweets at @ChasePadusniak.
<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though on the surface confusing and fragmented, William Langland’s poem expose in both theme and form the struggles that Christians confronted in his own time–and still do in our 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