The Space of the Medieval Allegory: William Langland’s Vision of Piers Plowman

Abstract

Allegory as a genre of medieval literature is over treated as something fictitious and schematic, replaced later by more vivacious, bright and substantial pictures of the reality. However, when examining allegory not only as an artistic method but also as a way to percept and shape reality, we can see that the reality of the allegory is fairly objective, and its content goes far beyond simple didacticism. Allegory links everyday human existence with Biblical events, thus becoming a way to immerse the reader emotionally into what is happening here and now as into the Biblical story incessantly unrolling itself, where everyone can proceed from “the son of Adam” to “the son of God”. An allegoric story pretends not only the reader’s reaction to the pictures shown to him but also his personal involvement and interest in things that are not (both for him and for the author) made up for illustrating some abstract maxims; they are real, never receding to past, and they must be taken very seriously indeed. The Vision of Piers Plowman by William Langland, with its complicated plot and a vast amount of characters, involves the narrator and the reader after him into a world where past and present, material and spiritual unite – and even if that world is attainable only while dreaming, it always exists nearby.

Keywords

• allegory
• vision
• langland
• medieval literature
• english literature