ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 2. Ralph Hanna
Читать онлайн.Название The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 2
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9780812293838
Автор произведения Ralph Hanna
Жанр Языкознание
Издательство Ingram
Moreover, the waking interlude here also reveals something of L’s sense of poetic structure. As I will indicate at many points (see the preceding note and esp. 8.19–55n), the poem’s second vision deliberately mirrors the first, in the main by social inversion (cf. Middleton 2013:121–24). It thus establishes one basic pattern in the poem, the arrangement of its eight “outer” dreams into four pairs. Here the waking scene creates a further structural balance. It answers the last waking interlude in the poem, the dreamer’s meeting with Need (22.1–52): just as that conversation separates the next-to-last and last visions of PP, so this one separates the first and second visions. And these two waking scenes raise similar thematic concerns—the degree to which the dreamer may be conceived to be licitly indigent, free to take what he pleases for his survival without regard to contemporary expectations about labor (see Middleton 1997:234–35, 270–72).
——— whan y wonede in Cornehull: Pearsall notes that Cornhill “had something of a reputation as a resort of London vagabonds” (cf. Hanawalt 2005:1069–71); he cites “London Lickpenny” 85–88 for the stolen-clothes market there (he might have noted the connection with its proprietors, the vphalderes of 6.374 and 12.216–18). But although the locale may have spawned its own route of ratones, it was also a place (as Pearsall sees) associated with the imposition of severe judicial punishments, the site both of a prison, the Tun, and of a pillory and stocks. Indeed, London legislation of 1359 specifically cites these stocks as those to which officials of all wards should bring false beggars capable of labor (Clopper 1992:19). See also Benson 2000.
2 Kytte and y: At 20.469, Kytte reappears—at that point probably as the dreamer’s wife (and mother of his child; cf. the actions of my wyf at 22.193). But ME wife n. is ambiguous, either “woman” or “wife,” and Kit’s status here remains unclear. Given the next line and Will’s association with—and concomitant efforts to distinguish himself from—lewede Eremytes, Kit may be simply his concubine, one of those “Walsingham wenches” L has described at Prol.52. And as I have pointed out (1997:32–34), some evidence for married hermits does exist.
The name Kit, just like that of the daughter Calot who also appears at 20.469, identifies the figure as a “type-female.” The derived common noun a kitte (7.304) refers to a wife; Kitte is also the (type-)name of the cunning tapster who dupes the Pardoner in the “Prologue to the Tale of Beryn” (see lines 65–66), and the phrase “lewde kitt(is)” describes tricky women there (lines 443–46) and as a plausible emendation at Mum 1357 (in a passage inspired by PP, perhaps this locus). Mustanoja (1970:70) provides telling examples of pet-names for Katherine to define stock feminine “abuses.” He thus cites N-Town Plays, EETS ss 11, 139/15 and 17, respectively, for Kate kell (Katherine with her hairnet?) and Kytt cakelere (Kitty, who will not—like all women—keep her mouth shut). Rather than a discernible person, L’s wife, Kytte may just represent a type—female companionship, with all those irritations misogynists, like the author of the “Prologue to Beryn,” comment upon. See further 128n below.
Indeed, in many respects Will’s sexuality is a synecdoche for his identity. It is obviously relevant to two of the signatures Middleton identifies (1990:44–52, 74): “þe longe launde þat leccherie hatte” (A 11.118) and “þe londe of longynge and loue” (B 11.8). One might compare further Wit’s endorsement of sexuality at B 9.182–86L, a passage that suggests that the dreamer here is still yong and yeep; Concupiscentia Carnis offers similar counsel at 11.176–80, and Imaginative recalls Will’s “wilde wantownesse whiles þow yong were” (B 12.6). Will’s life, as he describes it here (cf. his locution, “louede wel fare” 8), is one of desire and self-indulgence; cf. the “unreasonable” life of mankind 13.151–55. In the context of Will’s later claim to perfection and a special status that would underwrite his life, and thus his poetry (see 84n below for its relation to passus 11), the repetition of the name Kitte at 7.304 (see 7.292–306n) is perhaps especially damning: Luke 14, the same biblical locus from which L will identify at 7.81–118L a blessed form of “minstrelsy,” equally condemns the man overly solicitous about his kitte.
However, Kytte has normally been read here as a wife and the dreamer as some variety of failed priest, a possibility that gains some credence from Lister M. Matheson’s discovery that a “William Rokayle” was ordained to first tonsure by Wolstan de Bransford, bishop of Worcester, before 1341 (announced Hanna 2000:187). Donaldson (1949:206–8) analyzes the priestly dreamer’s relation to ordo. In his lengthy discussion, for the most part based on William Lyndwood’s Provinciale, Donaldson identifies L’s dreamer as an acolyte. Upon his marriage, he says (206–7), Will would have entered an anomalous status. He could not have advanced beyond his current rank and would have been unable to serve at the altar, thus incapable of fulfilling a truly clerical function and resembling a layperson (hence the embarrassment of Reason’s opening question in 12); but so long as he retained his tonsure (which he apparently has done; see 56) and wore appropriate clerical clothing (see the next note but one), he would have retained his privilegium clericale (see 59–60n).
Will’s identity-defining marital status, coupled with his aversion to any labor except sleep (“making”) and drink, might well recall Ch’s Pardoner at CT VI.453–54. Indeed, the central contention of the Pardoner’s performance, “For though myself be a ful vicious man, | A moral tale yet I you telle kan” (VI.459–60), resonates strikingly with Will’s presentation and behavior here. Implicitly, H. Marshall Leicester, Jr.’s witty reading of the Pardoner as D. W. Robertson (1990:35–64) addresses relevant issues.
However, various details of self-presentation might imply that the Pardoner shows nothing other than Ch’s parodic reading of L’s poetic. (For a similar reading of Chaucerian revision of PP, see Grady 1996.) Like our poet, the Pardoner delights in dropping in bits of Latin (CT VI.344–46), as well as (if not biblical, at least “olde”) examples to stir his auditors’ benefactions; and he shows a similar propensity to lakke others publicly (cf. B 5.86n).
Moreover, in his most extensive description of his practice (435–54), the Pardoner implicitly riffs on a biblical verse integral to Will’s self-portrayal, Luke 16:3 (see 22–25n). Like Will, he defines his “profession” as neither labor nor beggary, but gainful and efficacious nonetheless. The range of Langlandian detail Ch allows his character to enunciate might be extended considerably, e.g., the Pardoner’s eunuchry, a cruel reflection of 22/B 20.193–98, or his association of undesirable labor and basketmaking a slighting depiction of Will’s claim to quasi-eremetic status (cf. 17.13–18 [B 15.286–91]).
——— in a cote: Such an abode implies that here the dreamer is just hanging on, living on next to nothing. The citations presented by MED stress the tininess of such hovels and the poverty of those inhabiting them. The term looks ahead to the depiction of grinding, mostly rural, poverty in passus 9, where the cote, in that context both “cottage” and “coat,” effectively cloaks the poor from scrutiny. See further 9.72, 85 and nn, as well as 1–108n above.
——— yclothed as a lollare: Will shortly (41) refers to his garments as longe clothes. And they are presumably the same “shroude” he makes for himself at Prol.3; for further references to hermit clothing, see, e.g., 10.1, 15.3, B 13.284–85, 20.1. Compare also the description of self-made hermits’ garments at Prol.53–55, 8.182–87 and the logic underlying the assumption of such garments by unqualified “lollares” and “Ermytes,” apparently identical persons, at 9.204–12. These latter passages indicate that such garments deliberately imitate the opulent copes of friars, always (from Prol.59 on) described as if marking both a steady income and impressive clerical status. MED fails to note “longe clothes” as a technical term for some kind of habit, what