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The Spirituality of Piers Plowman: A New Look

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Mary Clemente Davlin OP
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In memory of Conrad Pepler OP (1908-1993)

Sixty years ago, Conrad Pepler wrote “The Spirituality of William Langland,” a short study of the fourteenth-century poem, Piers Plowman (Blackfriars 20 (1939): 846-854). This book-length medieval religious poem, by a Londoner usually called William Langland, narrates the life story of a commoner, Will, in a series of ten dream-visions which give him insight into life, the community, evil and sin, and the search for God. In this poem, Father Pepler found “a truly English and liturgical type of spirituality that must have been characteristic of the devout members of the Church, both ecclesiastical and lay” ("Spirituality” 846). In his Blackfriars essay and in a chapter of his 1958 book, The English Religious Heritage, Father Pepler saw Piers Plowman as “delineating the beginning and growth of the spiritual life in the common man” {ERH 56). He defined the spirituality of Piers Plowman as “objective,” reflecting “the restrained, austere and majestic treatment of the liturgy” in sharp contrast to the subjective, “realistic and emotional devotion to the humanity of Christ, so typical of fourteenth century piety” ("Spirituality” 853). He noted the centrality in the poem of the idea of relationship: “from the very fact of the Incarnation all mankind has become related to God in common brotherhood, even those outside the Church” (ERH 56; cf. “Spirituality” 850).

Father Pepler's article was written at a time of great scholarly interest in Piers Plowman as a religious work. It was preceded by the work of such giants as R. W. Chambers (1924, 1939) who compared Piers to the Divine Comedy.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 81 , Issue 950 , April 2000 , pp. 124 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Chambers, “Long Will, Dante, and the Righteous Heathen,” Essays and Studies 9: 50–69Google Scholar; Man's Unconquerable Mind. London: Cape. Owst, , “The ‘Angel’ and the ‘Goliardeys’ of Langland's Prologue,” MLR 30 (1925): 270–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Preaching in Medieval England. Cambridge: C. U. P., 1926Google Scholar; Literature and Pulpit in Medieval England. Cambridge: C. U. P., 1933Google Scholar. Lewis, , Allegory of Love. London: Oxford U. P., 1936Google Scholar.

2 Day, , “Duns Scotus and ‘Piers Plowman’,” RES 3 (1927): 333–4Google Scholar; Devlin, , “Bishop Thomas Brunton [sic] and his Sermons,” Speculum 14 (1939): 324–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Dunning, , Piers Plowman. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1937Google Scholar; Hort, , Piers Plowman and Contemporary Religious Thought. London: S.P.C.K., 1938Google Scholar; Wells, , “The Construction of Piers Plowman,” PMLA 45 (1929): 123–40Google Scholar; Dawson, , The English Way, ed. Ward, M.. London: Sheed and Ward, 1933Google Scholar.

3 Kuczynski, Michael P., Prophetic Song. Philadelphia: U. of Pennsylvania, 1995CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davlin, S. M. C., “Piers Plowman and the Books of Wisdom,” YLS 2 (1988): 23–33Google Scholar and “Piers Plowman and the Gospel and First Epistle of John,” YLS 10 (1996): 89–127Google Scholar.

4 Bennett, J. A. W., Poetry of the Passion. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982Google Scholar; St.Jacques, , “Langland's Bells of the Resurrection and the Easter Liturgy,” English Studies in Canada 3 (1977): 129–135CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and other studies.

5 “The Idea of Public Poetry in the Reign of Richard II,” Speculum 53 (1978): 94–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Kirk, Elizabeth, “Langlands Plowman and the Recreation of Fourteenth‐Century Religious Metaphor,” YLS 2 (1988): 1–21Google Scholar; Gervase Mathew OP. wrote about “Justice and Charity in The Vision of Piers Plowman,” Dominican Studies 1 (1948): 360–66Google Scholar.

7 “Christ's Humanity and Piers Plowman,” YLS 8 (1994): 107–126Google Scholar.

8 Vicaire, M‐H., St. Dominic and his Times, trans. Pond, K.. London: McGraw Hill, 1964Google Scholar: passim, 161.

9 Two excellent editions in paperback, with helpful notes, are A. V. C. Schmidt, Vision of Piers Plowman, 2nd ed.

10 Everyman. London: Dent, and Boston: Tuttle, 1995, and Pearsall, Derek, Piers Plowman. London: Arnold, 1978Google Scholar. The notes in W. W. Skeat's old edition, Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, 2 vol. London: Oxford U. P., 1978, remain invaluable. The five modernizations currently in print are by Donaldson (Norton, 1990), Schmidt (Oxford U. P. 1992), Lovella (Pegasus, 1992), Goodridge (Penguin, 1959), and Economou (U. of Pennsylvania, 1996). See also Simpson, James, Piers Plowman, an Introduction to the B‐Text. London: Longman, 1990Google Scholar.