Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

8-1989

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Thomas J. Heffernan

Committee Members

John H. Fischer, Joseph B. Trahern, Sheldon M. Cohen

Abstract

The last half of the fourteenth century in England is perhaps one of the greatest periods of social, economic, and religious change in English history. Piers Plowman, written in three versions from ca. 1362 to ca. 1387, attempts to represent imaginatively these changes in the established patterns of order. In the poem, William Langland perceives these changes as corruptions of the order of signification on several levels, ranging from the social to the personal. This dissertation asserts that the most appropriate way to understand Piers PIowman is to contextualize its poetic and theological strategies for representing the crisis in signification within the larger scope of medieval sign theory.

Part one, consisting of Chapters I and II, attempts to construct a model for medieval sign theory and to place Langland within its ideology. Chapter I constructs a partial model for medieval sign theory emanating from Augustine and traces the development of sign theory in grammar, logic. Biblical exegesis, and liturgy in both the early Middle Ages and in the high and late Middle Ages. Chapter II, drawing upon the discussion of sign theory in Chapter I, shows Langland to follow more directly the early medieval theory of signs found in discussions of grammar, logic. Biblical exegesis, and liturgy.

Part two, consisting of Chapters III and IV, shows how a knowledge of medieval sign theory in general and Langland's particular understanding of it can illuminate the method of production in the first two versions of the poem. Chapter III considers the A text as Langland's first attempt to respond to the corruption of signs in post-Plague England. The A text attempts to reassert imaginatively one of the central signs in medieval society of the Trinity: the triangle of oratores, bellatores, and laboratores. When the attempt fails, the poem turns to an internal investigation of the self which becomes involved in an ideological struggle over the value of education to salvation. The poem ends in crisis because the dreamer and perhaps the poet are unable to find the correct tools for amending the corruption of signs. Chapter IV considers the B text as Langland's second attempt to deal with the corruption of signs by moving beyond the desire to re-establish the triangular conception of society to a desire to reform and teach the individual how to perceive the corruption of signs in a number of contexts. This change in the nature of the poem is likely the product of growing uncertainties about England in the 1370s. Throughout both A and B texts Langland's method is underwritten with the notion that "signs" exist on earth and "things" exist in heaven. The poem instructs the dreamer and readers or hearers how earthly signs have been corrupted in the various social estates with the intention that they may read signs properly.

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