[ Home | Contents | Post | Reply | Next | Previous | Up ]
From: Iansito
Date: 11/18/99
Time: 1:03:28 PM
Remote Name: 12.78.96.132
The prologue and Passus 1, 2, and 3 are littered with social and economic commentary on the 14th century. Regardless of the metaphorical and allegorical elements, Piers Plowman is essentially a social commentary. The primary importance of Lady Meed signifies the advent of the market society as well as the problematic nature of money as a form equal to ideological power.
Throughout the beginning of the poem, the author constantly refers to the distinction between social classes and its moral and economic importance. In his converstaion with Truth, we are reminded that "rich persons are to have pity on the poor/Though you're mighty men at law, be meek in your deeds..." (line 175-176). The poem is thus confronting and answering very specific social concerns. Accordingly, all men need and ask for is "vesture to defend [them] from the cold/[and] food at fit times to fend off hunger" (23-24). In this sense, it resonates in the modern world as well as the medieval period.
The historical birth of a market economy before and after the plague further divides the poor from the aristocratic, upper classes. The dream, then, of "human beings of all sorts, the high and the low,/working and wandering as the world requires" (prologue 18-19) separated from the "Tower" must not only be related to the more convenient medieval literary concepts of allegory and analogy but to the more pervasive and significant history of social change.