Skip to content
1882
Volume 36, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0890-2917
  • E-ISSN: 2031-0242

Abstract

Abstract

This essay considers Langland’s representation of the figure of the fool and what it can teach us about both medieval and current understandings of wisdom and folly. It argues that, in contrast to the deficit-based models of mental and cognitive limitation that are prevalent today, the poem cultivates an understanding of the wisdom of the fool, an understanding that emerges through Langland’s opposition of sinful and holy fools, willed and unwilled forms of folly. Such attention to the poem’s representation of folly - and the biblical, literary, and theological sources from which those representations draw - provide a clearer view of Langland’s understanding of the role played by failure, error, and difficulty in the education of the will, as Will’s often painful encounters with foolishness (his own and that of others) provide important lessons in humility. In contrast to current models of cognitive deficit and the ideologies of worldly achievement from which they arise, the poem thus provides us with a worldview in which foolishness is central to the human experience and the intellectual limitation, marginalization, and suffering associated with it, but that also presents generative opportunities for renewal.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1484/J.YLS.5.131968
2022-01-01
2025-12-04

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Primary Sources
    Aquinas, Thomas, Summa theologiae, ed. by Thomas Gilby and others, 61 vols (London: Blackfriars, 1964–1981)
  2. ———, Summa theologiae, trans. by English Dominican Province, 2nd rev. edn (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1920); online at <www.newadvent.org/summa/> [accessed 15 August 2021]
  3. Augustine, On the Trinity: Books 8–15, ed. by Gareth B. Matthews, trans. by Stephen McKenna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
  4. Bartholomaeus Anglicus, De proprietatibus rerum, ed. by Baudouin van den Abeele and others, 2 of 6 vols, ‘De diversis artibus’, 78–79 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007–)
  5. ———, On the Properties of Things: John Trevisa’s Translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus rerum, ed. by M. C. Seymour and others, 3 vols (London: Oxford University Press, 1975–2019)
  6. Descartes, René, Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), in Meditations, Objections, and Replies, ed. and trans. by Roger Ariew (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2000), pp. 97–132
  7. De stulticiis, in Paul Meyer, ‘Bribes de littérature anglo-normande’, in Jahrbuch für romanische und englische Literatur, 7 (1886), 56–57
  8. Hugh of Saint Victor, The Didascalicon of Hugh of Saint Victor: A Medieval Guide to the Arts, trans. by Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991)
  9. Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, trans. by Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach, and Oliver Berghof, with Muriel Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
  10. Langland, William, The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text Based on Trinity College Cambridge MS B.15.17, ed. by A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd edn (London: Dent, 1995)
  11. ———, Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the C-Text, ed. by Derek Pearsall (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 2008; repr. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014)
  12. Nicolas of Cusa, Opera omnia, vol. 5: Idiota, De Sapientia, De Mente, ed. by Renate Steiger (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983)
  13. ———, On Wisdom and Knowledge, trans. by J. Hopkins (Minneapolis: Banning, 1996)
  14. Wireker, Nigellus, Speculum Stultorum, in The Anglo-Latin Satirical Poets and Epigrammatists of the Twelfth Century, vol. 1, ed. by Thomas Wright (London: Longman, 1872), pp. 3–145
  15. ———, The Book of Daun Burnel the Ass, trans. by Graydon W. Regenos (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1959)
  16. Ywain and Gawain, ed. by Albert B. Friedman and Norman T. Harrington, EETS, o.s. 254 (London: Oxford University Press, 1964)
  17. Secondary Sources
    Aers, David, Beyond Reformation? An Essay on William Langland’s ‘Piers Plowman’ and the End of Constantinian Christianity (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015)
  18. ———, Salvation and Sin: Augustine, Langland, and Fourteenth-Century Theology (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009)
  19. Austin, J. L., ‘A Plea for Excuses: The Presidential Address’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. 57 (1956–1957), 1–30; repr. as ‘A Plea for Excuses’ in J. L. Austin, Philosophical Papers, 3rd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 175–204
  20. Billington, Sandra, A Social History of the Fool (Brighton: Harvester, 1984)
  21. Bowers, John M., The Crisis of Will in ‘Piers Plowman’ (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 1986)
  22. Buhrer, Eliza, ‘“But what is to be said of a fool?”: Intellectual Disability in Medieval Thought and Culture’, in Mental Health, Spirituality, and Religion in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 314–43
  23. ———, ‘Inventing Idiocy: Law, Land, and the Construction of Intellectual Disability in Late Medieval England’ (unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 2013)
  24. ———, ‘Law and Mental Competency in Late Medieval England’, Reading Medieval Studies, 40 (2014), 82100
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Carruthers, Mary, The Search for St Truth: A Study of Meaning in ‘Piers Plowman’ (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1973)
  26. Cavell, Stanley, Must We Mean What We Say? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976)
  27. Clopper, Lawrence, ‘Langland’s Persona: An Anatomy of the Mendicant Orders’, in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. by Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), pp. 144–84
  28. Coleman, Janet, ‘Piers Plowman’ and the Moderni (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1981)
  29. Davis, Lennard J., Enforcing Normalcy: Disability, Deafness, and the Body (London: Verso, 1995)
  30. Doob, Penelope B. R., Nebuchadnezzar’s Children: Conventions of Madness in Medieval Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974)
  31. Evans, G. R., Getting it Wrong: The Medieval Epistemology of Error (Leiden: Brill, 1998)
  32. Garnier, François, ‘Les conceptions de la folie d’après l’iconographie médiévale du psaume “Dixit incipiens”’, Actes du 102e Congrès national des Sociétés savants, Limoges, 1977, Section de philologie et d’histoire (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1979), 215–22
  33. Gianfalla, Jennifer M., ‘“Ther is moore mysshapen amonges thise beggeres”: Discourses of Disability in Piers Plowman’, in Disability in the Middle Ages: Reconsiderations and Reverberations, ed. by Joshua Eyler (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 119–34
  34. Goodey, C. F., A History of Intelligence and ‘Intellectual Disability’: The Shaping of Psychology in Early Modern Europe (Burlington: Ashgate, 2011)
  35. ———, ‘What is Developmental Disability? The Origin and Nature of Our Conceptual Models’, Journal on Developmental Disabilities, 8.2 (2001), 118
    [Google Scholar]
  36. Gruenler, Curtis, ‘How to Read Like a Fool: Riddle Contests and the Banquet of Conscience in Piers Plowman’, Speculum, 85.3 (2010), 592630
    [Google Scholar]
  37. Harper, Stephen, Insanity, Individuals, and Society in Late-Medieval English Literature (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen, 2003)
  38. ———, ‘“Pleyng with a Zerd”: Folly and Madness in the Prologue and “Tale of Beryn”’, Studies in Philology, 101.3 (2004), 299314
    [Google Scholar]
  39. Harwood, Britton J., and Ruth F. Smith, ‘Inwit and the Castle of “Caro” in Piers Plowman’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 71.4 (1970), 64854
    [Google Scholar]
  40. Huot, Sylvia, Madness in Medieval French Literature: Identities Lost and Found (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)
  41. Ivanov, Sergey, Holy Fools in Byzantium and Beyond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006)
  42. Karnes, Michelle, Imagination, Meditation, and Cognition in the Middle Ages (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011)
  43. Kaulbach, Ernest, ‘Piers Plowman B.IX.: Further Refinements of Inwitte’, in Linguistic and Literary Studies 4: Linguistics and Literature / Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics, ed. by Mohammad A. Jazayery and others (The Hague: DeGruyter, 1979), pp. 103–10
  44. Kemp, SimonMedieval Psychology (New York: Greenwood, 1990)
  45. Kerby-Fulton, Katheryn, Reformist Apocalypticism and ‘Piers Plowman’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
  46. Martin, Jay, ‘Wil as Fool and Wanderer in Piers Plowman’, Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 3 (1962), 53448
    [Google Scholar]
  47. McDonagh, Patrick, Idiocy: A Cultural History (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2008)
  48. McDonagh, Patrick, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton, eds, Intellectual Disability: A Conceptual History, 1200–1900 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018)
  49. Metzler, Irina, Fools and Idiots?: Intellectual Disability in the Middle Ages (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016)
  50. ———, ‘Intellectual Disability in the European Middle Ages’, in The Oxford Handbook of Disability History, ed. by Michael Rembis, Catherine Kudlick, and Kim E. Nielson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 55–70
  51. ———, ‘“Will-nots” and “Cannots”: Tracing a Trope in Medieval Thought’, in Intellectual Disability: A Conceptual History, 1200–1900, ed. by Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 45–63
  52. Middleton, Anne, ‘Narration and the Invention of Experience: Episodic Form in Piers Plowman’, in The Wisdom of Poetry: Essays in English Literature in Honor of Morton W. Bloomfield, ed. by Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute, 1982), pp. 91–122
  53. ———, ‘William Langland’s “Kynde Name”: Authorial Signature and Social Identity in Late Fourteenth-Century England’, in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1530, ed. by Lee Patterson (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), pp. 15–82
  54. Middle English Dictionary, ed. by Robert E. Lewis, and others (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1952–2001). Online edition in Middle English Compendium, ed. by Frances McSparran, and others. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Library, 2000–2018) <https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-english-dictionary/> [accessed 20 April 2022]
  55. Moi, Toril, Revolution of the Ordinary: Literary Studies after Wittgenstein, Austin, and Cavell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2017)
  56. Murtaugh, Daniel, ‘Piers Plowman’ and the Image of God (Gainesville: University of Florida, 1978)
  57. Neugebauer, Richard, ‘Mental Handicap in Medieval and Early Modern England: Criteria, Measurement and Care’, Archives of General Psychology, 36 (1979), 477–83; repr. in From Idiocy to Mental Deficiency: Historical Perspectives on People with Learning Disabilities, ed. by Anne Digby and David Wright (London: Routledge, 1996), pp. 22–43
  58. Paulson, Julie, Theater of the Word: Selfhood in the English Morality Play (South Bend, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 2019)
  59. Pearsall, Derek, ‘“Lunatyk Lollares” in Piers Plowman’, in Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England: The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1988, ed. by Piero Boitani and Anna Torti (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 1981), pp. 163–78
  60. ———, ‘Poverty and Poor People in Piers Plowman’, in Medieval English Studies, Presented to George Kane, ed. by Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig (Cambridge: Brewer, 1988), pp. 167–80
  61. Quirk, Randolph, ‘Langland’s Use of Kind Wit and Inwit’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 52 (1953), 18288
    [Google Scholar]
  62. Raskolnikov, Masha, Body against Soul: Gender and Sowlehele in Middle English Allegory (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2009)
  63. Robertson, Elizabeth, ‘Soul-Making in Piers Plowman’, Yearbook of Langland Studies, 34 (2020), 1156
    [Google Scholar]
  64. ———, ‘Souls that Matter: The Gendering of the Soul in Piers Plowman’, in Mindful Spirit in Late Medieval Literature: Essays in Honor of Elizabeth D. Kirk, ed. by Bonnie Wheeler (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 165–86
  65. Ronell, Avital, Stupidity (Bloomington: University of Illinois Press, 2002)
  66. Saward, John, Perfect Fools: Folly for Christ’s Sake in Catholic and Orthodox Spirituality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980)
  67. Scase, Wendy, Piers Plowman’ and the New Anticlericalism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989)
  68. Schmidt, A. V. C., ‘A Note on Langland’s Conception of “Anima” and “Inwit”’, Notes and Queries, n.s. 15 (1968), 363–64
  69. Simpson, James, ‘From Reason to Affective Knowledge: Modes of Thought and Poetic Form’, in ‘Piers Plowman’, Medium Ævum, 55 (1986), 123
    [Google Scholar]
  70. ———, Piers Plowman’: An Introduction to the B Text (London: Longman, 1990)
  71. Southworth, John, Fools and Jesters at the English Court (Stroud: Sutton, 1998)
  72. Stainton, Tim, ‘Medieval Charitable Institutions and Intellectual Impairment: c. 1066–1600’, Journal on Developmental Disabilities, 8.2 (2001), 1929
    [Google Scholar]
  73. ———, ‘Reason’s Other: The Emergence of the Disabled Subject in the Northern Renaissance’, Disability & Society, 19.3 (2004), 22543
    [Google Scholar]
  74. ———, ‘The Roots of Exclusion: The Thought of Aristotle and Plato and the Construction of Intellectual Disability’, Mental Retardation, 39.6 (2001), 45260
    [Google Scholar]
  75. Star, Sarah, ‘Will’s Prosthesis’, Yearbook of Langland Studies, 35 (2021), 1127
    [Google Scholar]
  76. Steiner, Emily, Reading ‘Piers Plowman’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
  77. Swain, Barbara, Fools and Folly During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1932)
  78. Trent, James L., Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Mental Retardation in the United States (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994); republished as Inventing the Feeble Mind: A History of Intellectual Disability in the United States, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017)
  79. Turner, Wendy, ‘Conceptualization of Intellectual Disability in Medieval English Law’, in Intellectual Disability: A Conceptual History, 1200–1900, ed. by Patrick McDonagh, C. F. Goodey, and Tim Stainton (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 26–44
  80. Weil, Simone, ‘Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God’, in Waiting for God, trans. by Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Perennial, 2009), pp. 57–65
  81. Welsford, Enid, The Fool: His Social and Literary History (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith, 1935, repr. 1966)
  82. Wenzel, Siegfried, ‘The Wisdom of the Fool’, in The Wisdom of Poetry: Essays in Early English Literature in honor of Morton W. Bloomfield, ed. by Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel (Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University Press, 1982), pp. 225–40
  83. Whitehead, Christiania, Medieval Castles of the Mind: A Study of Medieval Architectural Allegory (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003)
  84. Wittig, Joseph S., ‘Piers Plowman B, Passus IX–XII: Elements in the Design of the Inward Journey’, Traditio, 28 (1972), 21180
    [Google Scholar]
  85. Zeeman, Nicolette, Piers Plowman’ and the Medieval Discourse of Desire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)
  86. ———, The Arts of Disruption: Allegory and ‘Piers Plowman’ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020)
/content/journals/10.1484/J.YLS.5.131968
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field.
Please enter a valid email address.
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An error occurred.
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error:
Please enter a valid_number test
aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYnJlcG9sc29ubGluZS5uZXQv