Language and Lady Meed: A study of the prologue and first four passus of "Piers Plowman".

Abstract

This dissertation addresses some of the central issues of recent scholarship on the poem. Langland is shown to be concerned above all with the great Christian contest between charity and cupidity. Nominalist influence on his theology and his linguistics is repudiated. Among the central points of the various chapters are: (1) That Lady Meed is a false vision of meed, associated with, but distinct from, cupidity; a figure used by Langland to explore the distructive power of cupidity in man's worldly and spiritual relationships. (2) That Langland's introduction of the term mercede does not reflect a new obsession with divine justice; rather Langland exploits the term, in the context of Conscience's debate with Lady Meed, to enable him to define more precisely the role of charity in man's worldly and spiritual affairs. (3) That interpretations of the grammatical analogy of C.III.332-405a based on fourteenth century nominalist theology are flawed and that the position they attempt to defend is probably untenable. (4) That the grammatical analogy is not centrally about rewards but is rather about the variety of relationships within which rewards are given and the moral qualities of those relationships. (5) That Langland did not have Conscience turn to language for an analogy because linguistic relationships provided model of Truth and law-governed behavior but because language was for him morally neutral and worldly; the linguistic analogy is most revealing when it breaks down. It is a strength of this interpretation that it shows the B- and C-texts to be in harmony at a number of points where previous studies have presented them as at variance with one another.