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Who is Piers Plowman?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
Perhaps no character in English Literature commissioned by his author to be the title bearer of his work has fulfilled his commission more effectively than Piers the Plowman. Even to the layman, ungiven to “Lettrure and longe studie,” there is pleasant connotation in the name, while to the scholar, moving in the uncertainties of authorship and text, the title of Piers the Plowman and the central importance of his figure in the poem stand as one thing sure. Still one may ask questions. Just why should this poem of political and religious satire have been called the vision or book concerning Piers the Plowman? From the angle of his presence in the action of the poem, he is but a minor character. Conscience, Kynde Witte, and Longe Wille, any of them are more consistently recurrent. Just who is Piers anyway? And what is his significance in the poem?
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1932
References
1 The author wishes to express his thanks to Dr. H. W. Wells of Columbia University for his valuable criticisms and suggestions in the preparation of this article.
2 Skeat's interpretation of this rôle is accepted in principle by Jusserand, Ten Brink, Morley, J. E. Wells, and Manley. Both Morley and Wells imply, however, that the transition is not a hard and fast one, Morley characterizing it as a rise from the former to the latter.
3 This distinction as made by Thomas Aquinas is as follows: “Nomina vero concreta supponunt hypostasim naturae; et ideo indifferenter praedicari possunt ea quae ad utramque naturam pertinent, de nominibus concretis; sive illud nomen de quo dicuntur, det intelligere, utramque maturam, sicut hoc nomen Christus, in quo intelligitur et Divinitas urgens et humanitas uncta; sive solum divinam naturam, sicut hoc nomen Deus, vel Filius Dei; sive solumn naturam humanam, sicut hoc nomen homo, vel Jesus.”—Summa Theologica, Quaest. xvi. Art. v.
4 B xviii, 22–25.
5 The author here seems to use the term Jesus as synonomous with the term Christ, though a distinction corresponding with the one in the quotation from Thomas Aquinas above is made in the lines immediately following.
6 B xix, 10–15.
7 Summa Theologica, Quaest. xvi, Art. v.
8 A case in point is B, vi, 133–134. There are many others.
9 For a brief but comprehensive introduction to the general question of symbolism in the Middle Ages. See H. O. Taylor, The Mediaeval Mind.
10 Formally they were known as interpreting the symbol on its allegorical, tropological, or anogogical level. For a very able and illuminating discussion of the medieval symbolism and its importance in medieval thought and literature, see H. Flanders Dunbar, Symbolism and Medieval Thought (Yale University Press, 1929).
11 Summa Theologica, Quaest. i, Art. x.
12 The Mediaeval Mini, ii, 43.
13 The second vision, B, v, vi, vii; the sixth vision, C xvi; the seventh vision, B xvi; and the tenth vision, B xix.
14 B v, 517–520.
15 B vii, 117–118.
16 C ix, 284–290.
17 B vi, 59–60.
18 B vi, 115–116.
19 B vi, 133–134.
20 B vii, 62–65.
21 B vii, 113–115.
22 C xvi, 149–150.
23 There is, for instance, the casual introduction of the speech of Piers as if it were the not unexpected speech of an ordinary member of the assembly, though his mysterious disappearance is carefully noted. The figure of Patience, as suggested, is quite like that of Christ on the road to Emmaus. It was not until after the blessing of the bread, one recalls, that the disciples recognized who spoke to them.
24 B xvi, 13–14.
25 Edited by F. A. Foster for the E.E.T.S., 1926. Lines 7496–7500.
26 B xix, 184–185.
27 C xvi, 33–34.
28 B xix, 383–386.
29 B xix, 426–436.
30 Vol. ii, xxiv.