'Piers Plowman' and the Medieval Discourse of Desire

A radical re-reading of Piers Plowman that sheds light on the history of medieval psychology.

Nicolette Zeeman (Author)

9780521122986, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 12 November 2009

328 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.48 kg

Review of the hardback: 'Zeeman keeps her promise as her reading unsettles the very notion of development (itself reflected in the linear division of the poem into sequentially numbered passus) … There can be no doubt that this book represents a serious bid for a lasting place among authoritative readings of the poem … Zeeman's book is also stimulating in a very personal and, perhaps, catholic sense, since it inadvertently exposes our search for completion, closure, and, ultimately, a happy ending' Anglia

This ambitious work links William Langland's great poem Piers Plowman to wider medieval enquiries into the nature of intellectual and spiritual desire. Nicolette Zeeman traces the history of psychology and its iconography in medieval devotional and theological literature, stretching back to St Augustine and Gregory the Great, and shows how an understanding of these traditions opens up a fresh reading of Piers Plowman. She challenges the consensus according to which the poem narrates an essentially positive 'education' of the will, and reveals instead a narrative of desire emerging from rebuke, loss and denial. This radical reading revolutionises our thinking about Piers Plowman, and sheds light on the history of medieval psychology, devotion, pastoral care, medieval textual theory and literary history.

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
Note on the text
Introduction: trial by desire
1. 'Painful lettings': sin, temptation and tribulation
2. Powers of knowledge and desire
3. Studying the word
4. The word heard and written
5. Seeing and suffering in nature
6. Clergie and kynde in Piers Plowman
7. Imaginatyf and the feast of Pacience
8. A poem shaped by knowing and wanting
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]