“Using Piers Plowman”

C. David Benson
(University of Connecticut)

Wednesday, November 1
12:30 pm
235 Nolte Center

Abstract: Using Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman may well be the least read great poem in our language. It intimidates readers by its difficulty, and its moral earnestness puts off many. I do not deny the difficulty of Piers Plowman, indeed I insist upon it, but far from being an impediment, I believe that difficulty, if understood rightly, is the key to its special delights. Piers Plowman is a poem by an intellectual for intellectuals. But even though it is full of thought and wrestles with major questions of this world and the next, Langland’s primary intention is not instruction. Piers may be said to have a recognizable system of belief, medieval Christianity, but it is not narrowly didactic. It plays with the mysteries and paradoxes of Christianity and the human condition without imagining that it can settle them. Langland is a poet who is always thinking, sparking us to do likewise, but he is not a poet preaching. For him it is the intellectual and literary journey not the pedagogical arrival that matters. Piers ransacks the storehouse of medieval Christian culture for its images, themes, and genres, less to make authorial statements than to provoke readers on their own individual quests.

The passage I have chosen to discuss, part of the dialogue between the narratorial “I” and the poem’s first personification, Holy Church, has been much commented on: especially Holy Church’s insult to the dreamer and her lines on the “plant of peace,” but they are usually treated separately. I want to explores the effect of the clash of discourses in this brief selection, including the surprising final comparison of Christ as love to a city mayor. I hope that by reading closely these lines we can together discover some of the intellectual and aesthetic pleasures of Piers Plowman. I will offer some of my ideas about the passage, but I am especially eager to hear what others find here.

Below is the passage I shall be discussing. A slightly different version, with a facing page translation, can be found in the recent Norton Critical Edition edited by Stephen Shepherd and Elizabeth Robertson.

Piers Plowman B-Text. Passus 1.138-62

“Yet have I no kynde knowyng,” quod I, “yet mote ye kenne me bettre
By what craft in my cors it comseth, and where.”
“Thow doted daffe!” quod she, “dulle are thi wittes.
To litel Latyn thow lernedest, leode, in thi youthe:
Heu michi quod sterilem duxi vitam iuvenilem! [Alas, what a futile life I lead in youth!]
It is a kynde knowynge that kenneth in thyn herte
For to loven thi Lord levere than thiselve,
No dedly synne to do, deye theigh thow sholdest--
This I trowe be truthe; who kan teche thee bettre,
Loke thow suffre hym to seye, and sithen lere it after;
For thus witnesseth his word; werche thow therafter.
“For Truthe telleth that love is triacle of hevene:
May no synne be on hym seene that that spice useth.
And alle his werkes he wroughte with love as hym liste,
And lered it Moyses for the leveste thyng and moost lik to hevene,
And also the plante of pees, moost precious of vertues:
For hevene myghte nat holden it, so was it hevy of hymself,
Til it hadde of the erthe eten his fille.
And whan it hadde of this fold flessh and blood taken,
Was nevere leef upon lynde lighter therafter,
And portatif and persaunt as the point of a nedle,
That myghte noon armure it lette ne none heighe walles.
“Forthi is Love ledere of the Lordes folk of hevene,
And the meene, as the mair is, inmiddis the kyng and the commune;
Right so is love a ledere and the lawe shapeth:
Upon man for his mysdedes the mercyment he taxeth.”