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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.
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