Piers Plowman and the Tradition of the Medieval Life of Christ [PhD thesis]

483 Pages·1975·25.46 MB·English

by  Macklin Smith

INFORMATION TO USERS
This material was produced from a microfilm copy of the original document. While
the most advanced technological means to photograph and reproduce this document
have been used, the quality is heavily dependent upon the quality of the original
submitted.
The following explanation of techniques is provided to help you understand
markings or patterns which may appear on this reproduction.
1. The sign or "target" for pages apparently lacking from the document
photographed is "Missing Page(s)". If it was possible to obtain the missing
page(s) or section, they are spliced into the film along with adjacent pages.
This may have necessitated cutting thru an image and duplicating adjacent
pages to insure you complete continuity.
2. When an image on the film is obliterated with a large round black mark, it
is an indication that the photographer suspected that the copy may have
moved during exposure and thus cause a blurred image. You will find a
good image of the page in the adjacent frame.
3. When a map, drawing or chart, etc., was part of the material being
photographed the photographer followed a definite method in
"sectioning" the material. It is customary to begin photoing at the upper
left hand corner of a large sheet and to continue photoing from left to
right in equal sections with a small overlap. If necessary, sectioning is
continued again — beginning below the first row and continuing on until
complete.
4. The majority of users indicate that the textual content is of greatest value,
however, a somewhat higher quality reproduction could be made from
"photographs" if essential to the understanding of the dissertation. Silver
prints of "photographs" may be ordered at additional charge by writing
the Order Department, giving the catalog number, title, author and
specific pages you wish reproduced.
5. PLEASE NOTE: Some pages may have indistinct print. Filmed as
received.
Xerox University Microfilms
300 North Zeeb Road
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
76-20,818
SMITH, Macklin, 1944-
PIERS PLOWMAN AND THE TRADITION OF THE
raiEVAL LIFE OF CHRIST.
Princeton University, Ph.D., 1976
Literature, general
XerOX University MiCrOfilmS, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106
© Copyright by Macklin Smith 1975
PIERS PLOWMAN AND THE TRADITION OF
THE MEDIEVAL LIFE OF CHRIST
Macklin Smith
A DISSERTATION
PRESENTED TO THE
FACULTY OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY
IN CANDICACY FOR THE DEGREE
OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE BY THE
DEPARTMENT OF
COMPARATIVE LITERATURE
OCTOBER, 1975.
ABSTRACT
PIERS PLOWMAN AND THE TRADITION OF
THE MEDIEVAL LIFE OF CHRIST
by
Macklin Smith
This study compares Langland's fourteenth-century allegory
with a form of contemplative literature widespread and influen
tial in his period but little known today. Lives of Christ were
written by members of every religious Order, and the Franciscans
especially produced a rich variety of them as their penitential
and scholarly missions required. As a result, the life of Christ
literature from the late Middle Ages includes—in Latin and in
the major European vernaculars—encyclopedias, theological trea
tises, expanded Gospel harmonies,- popular narratives and dramas,
and guides to contemplation such as pseudo-Bonaventura's Medita-
tiones Vitae Christi. Although their literary history remains
unrecorded, one can see that these works share a basic form re
flecting the Christological orientation of their history and
theology; and that most of them—and the most important of them—
employ the Franciscan "poetic" of presenting spiritual ideas in
the carnal, affective medium of imaginative vision. My compari
son of Piers Plowman with this tradition indicates Langland's
crucial indebtedness to it. The dreamer-narrator of Piers Plowman
has as his ultimate and saving experience a meditation on the
life of Christ; this experience controls the poem's major struc
tures, clarifies its verbal ambiguity, and establishes" its ironic
perspective on the hero's earlier state and on his society.
Studies of Piers Plowman have strained to reconcile its
structures, promising order and lucidity, and its actual verbal
ambiguity. Therefore I begin by analyzing its structures in
relation to that of the life of Christ. Chapter I briefly char
acterizes the structure of the life of Christ as a history of the
Age of Grace (from Incarnation to Last Judgment) and as a process
of descent to carnality and ascent to spiritual bliss; it urges
that such apocalyptic features as the coming of Antichrist and
personal tribulations belong within this process of the life of
Christ. The chapter then considers the structure of Piers Plow
man. Its eight dream visions and two inner dreams arrange them
selves symmetrically: those that precede the vita Christi (Passus
XVI to XX) and those that constitute it balance perfectly. The
poem's structure of Visio and Vita reflects this two-part action
as well as the thematic link of vision and the life of Christ.
Its structure of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest conforms with similar
triadic progressions in The Cloud of Unknowing. Bonaventura's
Lignum Vitae. Jacapone da Todi's Lauda LXXX, and the Meditationes
Vitae Christi; its ultimate reference is a progression of Dowel,
Dobet, and Dobest in the life of Christ narrated by Conscience
(Passus XIX). In sum, the three major structures of Piers Plowman
indicate the life of Christ.
In Chapter II, I compare actual lives of Christ and such
key features of Piers Plowman as the Tree of Charity, the alterna
tion of vision and commentary, the dialectical argument of Passus
XVIII, and the apocalyptic mode. Avoiding the chronology and in-
clusiveness of the Gospel harmony, Langland treats Christ's human
life according to the mystical theology of Bonaventura's Lignum
Vitae. and he further intellectualizes this process by his
sophisticated theological dialectic. He describes Christ's
divine life and the mystery of the Incarnation in the Tree of
Charity; Christ's Glorification and coming Judgment he alludes
to in Conscience's life of Christ, in the vision of the Holy
Spirit, and in the vision of Antichrist. He makes the mystery
of the Passion conventionally cardinal, hence the high style and
grand argument of Passus XVIII. I conclude that Will's vision
of the life of Christ owes much to the Franciscan concept of
"meditation on humanity," but that its dense dialectic is more
typical of Dominican than of Franciscan literary expression.
In Chapter III, I take up the problem of verbal ambiguity.
I find that those ideas which most vex Will by their multisemous
nature--Truth, Dowel, Love, Life, Kynde, and so on—are ultimately
defined as names of Christ. Such social types as the king,
priest, Doctor of Divinity, and Lady Mede (munus) are ultimately
satirized by their nominal identity but real unlikeness to Christ.
The contradictions amongst the Four Daughters of God are resolved
when it is shown that Mercy, Truth, Righteousness, and Peace are
all names and real qualities of Christ. Chapter III argues that
Langland was the unique poet who dramatized the nominalist crisis
of his day by emphasis on the instability and obscurity of words;
and that he intended to refute nominalism by demonstrating that
an.-Augustinian reality of names did reside in Christ, whose life
manifested a process of perfect truth, love, and virtue. Such
demonstration depended on the tradition of the late medieval life
of Christ.
v
PREFACE
This dissertation began when Professor John V. Fleming
indicated to me the existence of a literary tradition of major
importance to people of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
but little studied since. Books conceived as lives of Christ
seemed to deserve study in their own right, and such study
could contribute to medieval literary history as well as to
psychohistory or the history of spirituality. But I soon be
came convinced by my researches in the excellent collections
of the Firestone Library of Princeton University and the Speer
Library of the Princeton Theological Seminary that such a
study demanded several years and some reading of unedited
manuscripts in European libraries if its results were to be
at all thorough. A more limited topic seemed in order. When
a comparison of some published lives of Christ with Piers
Plowman began to yield exciting results, it seemed best to
confine myself to this topic.
I have concerned myself mostly with large formal com
parisons and with analyses of single words, for these scales
of comparison let us see how the late medieval lives of Christ
are most relevant to Piers Plowman. Some lives of Christ
contain much exegetical commentary that is influenced by
earlier works already cited by such scholars as Greta Hort,
vi
T. P. Dunning, Bernard F. Huppe and D. W. Robertson, Jr., and
Robert E. Kaske; in the belief that detailed comparisons on
this scale would merely confirm local interpretations by these
scholars, I have chosen to concentrate on the structure of
the life of Christ and on the names of Christ in Piers
Plowman.
I owe a great deal to a very many scholars of Piers Plowman
and of medieval spirituality, as my notes and bibliography
will indicate. My greatest debt is to Professor Fleming for
his initial direction to this topic, continued assistance, and
friendship throughout; Professors D. W. Robertson, Jr. and
Robert Hollander have taught me what else I know about
medieval literature. I am also grateful to Professor Robert
Fagles and other members of the Department of Comparative
Literature at Princeton University for their encouragement of
my graduate study over these long years. To Princeton Univer
sity and to the trustees of the Whiting Fellowship I am grate
ful for such financial assistance as let me complete these
researches uninterrupted.
vii
CONTENTS
ABSTRACT iii
PREFACE vi
Chapter
I. THE STRUCTURAL IMPORTANCE OF THE LIFE OF
CHRIST IN PIERS PLOWMAN 1
The Problem of Form 1
The Dream Structure 36
The Structure of Visio and Vita 96
Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest 121
Conclusion 156
II. THE MEDIEVAL LIFE OF CHRIST COMPARED WITH
PIERS PLOWMAN 159
The Form of the Life of Christ 159
Christ's Divine Life 176
The Divine Life in Piers Plowman 208
The Human Life of Christ 239
The Human Life in Piers Plowman 257
Conclusion 316
III. NAMES AND TYPES OF CHRIST 322
Irony 322
The Names of Christ 327
Antitypes 381
Conclusion 425
APPENDICES 428
I. THE ORDER OF BONAVENTURA»S LIGNUM VITAE . .. 428
II. DIALECTIC IN PASSUS XVIII 430
BIBLIOGRAPHY 436
viii
CHAPTER I
THE STRUCTURAL IMPORTANCE OF THE LIFE
OF CHRIST IN PIERS PLOWMAN
The Problem of Form
There exists in Piers Plowman a notable disparity
between the symmetry and hierarchical order of its super
imposed structures and its actual formal convolution and
confusion. Three major structures shall concern us. Most
obviously, the incipits and explicits (which should be
attributed to William Langland himself) arrange the poem
in two parts, Visio and Vita. Although unequal in length,
the Visio and Vita show enough structural and thematic
parallels to establish a sequential or progressive symmetry
between the Dreamer's initial vision and later experience.
Skeat's notes and apparatus indicate a remarkable
agreement amongst the various manuscripts concerning the
wording and placement of the incipits and explicits. That
sub-groups of the B-text and C-text do not diverge at these
key points suggests a single intelligence behind the struc
tures of Visio-Vita and Dowel-Dobet-Dobest. For the single
authorship of the three versions by one William Langland,
see George Kane, Piers Plowman: The Evidence for Authorship
(London: Athlone Press, 1965).
The edition used in this study is The Vision of
William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel
Texts . . . by_ William Langland. ed. Walter W. Skeat, 2 vols.
(1886; rpt. London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1965). I quote
from the B-text unless I note otherwise. I have eliminated
the medial dot and have substituted my own punctuation.
1