Free The Columbia History of British Poetry by Carl Woodring, James Shapiro

lures him into diatribes against clerical inadequacy and hypocrisy. His own role of poet, set against the absolute dictates of Christianity, is a problem: an overpowering need to say what he believes with no easy aesthetic to justify it. Hence he readily destroys some of his most effective bits (such as the tearing of the pardon) in later versions because they do not get the meaning right. Langland perhaps has more in common with the attitude of mystical writers of his day: confronted by the absolute truth of God, all language was inadequate and figurative; hence the figurative-

 

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ness of the poets could, by its very suggestiveness, take the audience farther towards truth than direct statement.
Langland's work was far more widely read than that of the other alliterative poets. He is much more approachable than any of them; Piers Plowman is difficult in essence, but most of its lines are easy to understand. Langland's desire to account for the whole state of man manifests itself in a comprehensiveness not only of his sympathies but also of his language: it encompasses the vivid and colloquialvoices off calling "hot pies," the dead Emperor Trajan bursting in shouting "Ye, baw for Bokes!," Holichurch's rebuke, "Thow doted daffe! . . . dulle are thi wittes!" and Dame Studie's dismissal of anyone who attempts to pry into divine secrets, "I wolde his eighe were in his ers and his fynger after'' (B.x.125). The language in which Christ's passion is recounted is liturgical and celebratory, woven with Latin phrases and chivalric imagery. There are a very few barren passages of medieval logic chopping, but many vigorous and moving reinterpretations of biblical history, such as Moses' appearance as a scurrying scout spying out the land, clutching his stone letters of promise that need only the seal to be affixed. Characters traditional in medieval writing (such as the four daughters of God) appear, speak, and act in ways that are unique to Langland. Langland mixes modes: the opening scene of the field full of folk features laborers behaving in a lifelike manner complete with vocal effects; it is suddenly interrupted, in the B version, by an angel calling out a message in Latin from heaven, followed by the sudden entrance of a crowd of mice and rats, who conduct a lively debate on the problem of belling the cat.
Langland's allegorical figures, in defiance of their ontological status, develop and change: the deadly sins burst into tears at the realization of their wrongdoing, Scripture loses her temper, Holy Church is distinctly snappish, and the chief guide and key, Piers Plowman himself, is by turns simple, baffled, authoritarian, and deceived, yet somehow turns into Christ and is the only hope for humanity at the end. It is a poem full of curious outbursts of bad temper, where characters insult each other and storm off in fits of rage and bafflement. The poet, in the happy words of one critic, has the habit of burning his narrative bridges as soon as he has crossed them: it is all work-in-progress, and the progress of the poem is never finished for either poet or dreamer. Modern as this sounds, the poet is yet convinced that there is such a thing as revealed truth; what exercises him is the extreme difficulty of express-

 

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ing it in human language. It is the opposite of cynical: whatever the poet's despair over the vices of his society, he still believes there is a truth to attain. The difficulty of expression compromises the poet's mission, and the lack of authority with which the poet speaks undermines his confidence. The crisis of the poem is reached in the Crucifixion scene (B.xviii), where we are shown what makes sense of Langland's world: the Christian paradoxes of death and life, sin and redemption, time and eternity all come together and enact (the scene is often compared to a medieval religious play) a drama that resolves the emotional issues of the poem without in any way solving its problems.
Piers