Langland, Wittgenstein, and the End of Language

This article uses Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1922) to explore the logical limits of language in PPl, contending that for both L and Wittgenstein language is bound to the world by dint of mirroring its logical structures. Concentrating on the devices of personification and typology, it suggests that L’s allegory maps reality qua language, through its syntactical and logical relationships. Reading the beginning and the end of the poem, it also examines the figure of I/Will as an instantiation of the first person around and through whom both language and the world are necessarily constructed.