Routledge Revivals: Chaucer, Langland, and the Creative Imagination (1980)

David Aers

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351373593
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Literature

First published in 1980, this study of two renowned later fourteenth century English poets, Chaucer and Langland, concentrates on some major and representative aspects of their work. Aers shows that, in contrast to the mass conventional writing of the period, which was happy to accept and propagate traditional ideologies, Chaucer and Langland were preoccupied with actual conflicts, strains, and developments in received ideologies and social practices. He demonstrates that they were genuinely exploratory, and created work which actively questioned dominant ideologies, even those which they themselves revered and hoped to affirm. For Chaucer and Langland the imagination was indeed creative, involved in the active construction of meanings, and in their poetry they grasped and explored social commitments, religious developments and many perplexing contradictions which were subverting inherited paradigms.

CHAPTER 1
Imagination and Traditional Ideologies in Piers Plowman

And boru3 hir wordes I wook and waited aboute,
And sei3 the sonne euene South sitte bat tyme,
Metelees and moneilees on Maluerne hulles.
Musynge on pis metels a myle wey ich yede.
Many times pis metels hajj maked me to studie
Of bat I sei3 slepynge, if it so be my3te . . .

Piers Plowman (B version), VII. 145-50

Traditional ideologies expressed the patterns through which self and world were perceived and understood. They depicted the features of legitimate authority and practice in different areas of the culture; they presented conventionally accepted beliefs, standards and values; they naturalized certain symbols and images which helped shape individual and collective experience. In short, they encouraged certain ways of seeing and thinking while discouraging others. No one has ever doubted the fundamental importance of traditional ideologies to Langland's perception and judgment. What has been less well recognized is the way writing poetry constantly released his imagination to embrace realities which pressed against received ideologies, his art putting these into solution despite the essential place they held in his conscious values and hopes. This is the relationship I wish to explore, between affirmation of established ideologies and their negation in the same poem, for this interplay turns out to be a central factor in the organization and magnificent achievement of Piers Plowman. I hope the study may also contribute to a more general discussion of the interactions between literature, social change and strains in received ideological structures. For Langland's great poem does invite attention to the ways in which traditional ideologies were themselves historical phenomena subject to diverse processes of change. With the gradual emergence of new social and economic situations, ideologies generated in earlier periods inevitably came under strain. Their authority was challenged and slowly undermined in the face of fresh problems, anomalies and confusions, leaving the community the long task of constructing ideologies and institutions appropriate to living in the changed circumstances.¹

In the present chapter we shall be especially concerned with the major social ideology of Langland's world. This envisaged society as a static hierarchy of estates, fixed in occupations which were organically related, mutually beneficial, harmonious and divinely ordained. Society was often presented as a human body, with head and hands as king and nobility, feet as peasantry, and so on. As common was the tripartite division into those who pray, those who fight and those who labour to maintain fighters and praysters. Thomas Wimbledon states the view typically in 1388:

in be chirche beej) nedeful f>es f>re offices: presthood, kny^thod, and laboreris. To prestes it fallif) to kutte awey }^e voide braunchis of synnis wifj fie swerd of here tonges. To kny^tis it fallijD to lette wrongis and f>eftis to be do and to mayntene Goddis Lawe and hem jrat ben techeris perof, and also to kepe J>e lond fro enemyes of o^er londes. And to laboreris it failed to trauayle bodily and wija here sore swet geten out of Jae erjje bodily liflode for her and for ofjer parties. And f^ese statis be'palso nedeful to Jae chirche jxit non may wel ben wif»uten ofier. For ^if presthod lackede |>e puple for defaute of knowyng of Goddis Lawe shulde wexe wilde on vices and deie gostly. And jif })e knythod lackid and men to reule }>e puple by lawe and hardnesse, fjeues and enemies shoden so encresse bat no man sholde lyuen in pes. And 3if laboreris weren not, bof)e prestis and kny^tis mosten bicome acremen and heerdis, and ellis ^ey sholde for defaute of bodily sustenaunce deie.

He develops this picture of mutual dependence adding that 'euery staat shul loue o^er'.² Traditional divisions of labour, distribution of products and forms of life are presented as eternal, while the hierarchy of power and privilege is to remain absolutely static. Thomas Wimbledon, for example, adds, '^if }x>u art a seruant oþer bondman, be soget and low in drede of displesynge to þy Lord', just as Gower, using the corporate image, asserts

Quant pié se lieve contre teste,
Trop est la guise deshonneste;

[When the foot rebels against the head
the behaviour is wholly illegitimate]

Similarly, another conventional preacher reminds 'knyʒthes and oþur gentils' to concentrate on 'good gouernaunce' and military efficiency, priests on Christ's law, 'lower men' on labour, and concludes: 'iff euery parte of Cristes churche wold hold hem content with here own occupacions and not to entermet far four þan reson and lawe rewels hem to, þan þe grace of almyghty God shuld floresh and þe more freshly contynue among.' So fixed are the boundaries that it seemed natural to perceive human identity almost completely in these classifications: 'There be in þis world þre maner of men, clerkes, knyʒthes, and commynalte.'³ When writers criticized deviations from this order in sermons or 'estates satire' their vision was firmly structured by the normative paradigm which never came into any kind of question: deviations were sinful and frequent, but corrigible. This attitude is evident in Lollard texts and Wyclif's work as well as in the orthodox writers referred to above." The leading ideology thus made the inherited social world, with its distribution of power, work and wealth, so natural that any opposition to it seemed literally monstrous, as well as iniquitous.⁵

Of course, there was opposition and some signs of alternative social ideologies significantly at odds with the dominant one, as the Peasants' Uprising of 1381 indicated. For instance, their demands seem to have included freedom from serfdom and lordship, the termination of traditional manorial jurisdiction and services as well as of existing lawyers and law, and the abolition of the ecclesiastical hierarchy with the material wealth on which its power rested. Such ideas expressed interests, aspirations and experiences different to those legitimated and sanctified in the leading ideology.⁶ Nevertheless, the latter quite precluded notions of chronic conflict of interests and outlook between groups. Similarly, ideas about changing aspirations and increasing social complexity and mobility were quite alien. Yet by Langland's time the dominant ideology had to confront new economic forces, and newly emerging social groups.⁷ Like others, however, Langland assumed the total relevance of the chief and traditional social model to his world and his poem, a fact which those critics who call him 'a traditionalist, if not a reactionary' have noted.⁸

In the Prologue to Piers Plowman it can be seen in the following passage:⁹

The kyng and knyʒthod and clergie boþe
Cast en þat þe commune sholde hire communes fynde.
The commune contreued of kynde wit craftes,
And for profit of al jae peple Plowmen ordeyned
To tilie and to trauaille as trewe lif askeþ.
The kyng and þe commune and kynde wit þe þridde
Shopen lawe and leaute, ech lif to knowe his owene.

(Pr. 116-22)

The peasantry serve the rest of society without any tensions while everybody is certain of his own fixed role. What 'trewe lif' and iawe' demand seems quite unequivocal, and in this scheme contemporary crafts all exist without conflict as they simply slot into unambiguous places in the harmonious totality. As late as Passus XIX Langland returns to this model, attributing it to the Holy Spirit (XIX 225-57), and it conveys his wish for the coherent world depicted in the inherited organic ideology. Nevertheless, his Prologue actually shows us something very different, something which goes considerably beyond the criticism of 'deviations' found in the estates satires and sermons mentioned earlier.

Probably all Langland's readers have relished the poetic vitality of the first dream 'Of alle manere of men,þe meene and þe riche,/Werchynge and wandrynge as þe world askeþ' (Pr. 18-19). The vitality is grounded in an outstanding imaginative response to the teeming energies of his society, and these justly famous lines represent the Prologue's impact:

Of alle kynne lybbynge laborers lopen forþ somme,
As dykeres and delueres þat doon hire dede ille
And dryueþ forþ þe longe day with 'Dieu saue dame Emme' .
Cokes and hire knaues cryden, 'hote pies, hote!
Goode gees and grys! go we dyne, go we!'
Tauerners til hem tolden þe same:
'Whit wyn of Oseye and wyn of Gascoigne,
Of þe Ryn and of þe Rochel þe roost to defie!'

(Pr. 223-30)

Here, as throughout the Prologue and many of the following passus, we are shown a mass of self-absorbed social practices in which there is no consciousness of any coherent order, organic unity or social telos, let alone a divine one. The participants, as in the Meed episode, appear to be discrete members of a mobile, fragmenting society revelling in processes of consumption and production which are an end in themselves. The poetic conviction communicating this state already encourages us to question the applicability of the leading ideological scheme to the culture Langland inhabits and scrutinizes - even as a normative paradigm against which deviations may be identified and corrected.

0The place of king and clergy in the Prologue may also be early signs in the poem of how extrinsic the major ideology has become. The clergy and religious institutions are immersed in the secular culture. Religion is predominantly another commodity, or an evasion of work, or training for service in secular affairs (Pr. 46-99) its roots and branches quite incompatible with the received model of the clergy's social role. I shall devote the next chapter to the church in Piers Plowman, for the degree to which the church is absorbed in the fluid culture Langland depicts is most significant.¹⁰ As for the king, we do not meet him until well into the Prologue (ll. 112 ff.), and no sooner have we noted the image of a harmonious distribution of power and responsibility than Langland relates the fable about belling the cat. While 'þe commune profit' is invoked (Pr. 148, 169), the fable presents the ruler as one acquisitive and violent interest among other similar ones. Neither in theory nor practice is it possible to identify 'commune profit' in the manner envisaged by the presiding social ideology. Whatever Langland's own attitudes to the mouse who advises quietistic resignation in the face of an irresponsible and predatory ruling group, he shows that political power is contended for by autonomous groups and individuals motivated by immediate economic interests. The mouse's acceptance of this state of affairs actually participates in the cool egotism that seems prevalent among both the predators and those thinking about resistance. His own motivation is an unprincipled self-preservation which does not care who else may be destroyed as long as his own carcass is safe (Pr. 185-208).¹¹

Struck by the centrality of economic self-interest in the world of the Prologue, Will asks Holy Church who actually has the right to 'þe moneie on þis molde þat men so faste holdeþ' (I. 44-6). The generalized question gets an even more generalized answer. Holy Church quotes from Matthew 22 where Jesus tells the Pharisees' disciples to render the things that are Caesar's to Caesar, and the things that are God's to God, and she rounds this off with her own comment.

For riʒtfully reson sholde rule yow alle,
And kynde wit be wardeyn your welþe to kepe
And tutour of youre tresor, and take it yow at nede;

(I. 54-6)

This brief statement raises issues we shall meet again and in more detail, but it is perhaps already becoming apparent that the instructor's moral language is rather remote from the realities of Langland's world and their visionary creation in his poem. For instance, in the lines just quoted, the abstraction 'welþe' is treated as a static thing, a box of physical treasure, rather than as the symbolic manifestation of social practices and unstable relationships which preoccupied Langland and made Will ask the question about money. Presenting these activities as a manageable fixity disastrously simplifies the problems raised by the mobile, acquisitive society of the Prologue, and Holy Church unhesitatingly puts forward the abstractions 'reson' and 'kynde wit' as agents who can solve the problems. But Piers Plowman has begun to make us uneasy with such solutions. We are told that 'kynde wit' is to be warden of wealth, yet we are made to wonder what the case will be if the 'welþe' has been accumulated by, for example, the merchants or tradesmen of the poem. Their occupations are essential in Langland's society, but the poet shows us how their practices transform 'kynde', leaving us to ask whose 'kynde' and 'kynde wit', whose 'reson' is now to provide the criteria of reformation.¹² The poem takes these as serious questions, finding that such disembodied and conventional abstractions may actually be controversial and equivocal terms with little obvious application to the world of incarnate beings Langland contemplates. Even Holy Church's confident statement that he who works well and ends in truth will be saved (I, 130-3), is turned by the poem into something profoundly problematic.¹³ Doubtless, Langland wished he could simply accept Holy Church's general assertion, for it fits well into the dominant ideology with its depiction of a static social order in which everyone's function is fixed and uncontroversial. But his scrupulous, vital and honest involvement with current developments will not allow him this comfort.

Passus I opened with Holy Church complaining that in Catholic England most people 'Haue þei worship in þis world þei kepe no bettre' (I. 5-9), and Passus II begins with a characteristic act of self-reflexivity. Through his Will the poet acknowledges his own complicity in the life he studies around the figure of Lady Meed: 'Hire array me rauysshed; swich richesse sauʒ I neuere' (II. 17). As the marriage of Meed proceeds, Langland's imagination is indeed ravished by the diverse energies of his society exemplified in the numberless 'route þat ran aboute Mede', in their exuberant journey to Westminster and their evasive action under attack which confirms the vigour of their existence.¹⁴ He insists that 'alle manere of men' are involved:

As of knyʒtes and of clerkes and ooʒer commune peple,
As Sisours and Somonours, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Imagination and Traditional Ideologies in Piers Plowman
• 2 Langland and the Church: Affirmation and Negation
• 3 Langland, Apocalypse and the Saeculum
• 4 Chaucer: Reflexive Imagination, Knowledge and Authority
• 5 Chaucer's Criseyde: Woman in Society, Woman in Love
• 6 Chaucer: Love, Sex and Marriage
• 7 Imagination, Order and Ideology: The Knight's Tale
• Notes
• Index