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This essay explores the surprisingly large and variegated body of Middle English allegorical texts that personify Dread (or Fear) near a door. It argues that these allegories were designed to facilitate what I call dreadful didacticism: a pedagogical effort, not only to impart to their audience an understanding of dread’s psychic function, but also to teach them how (not) to properly practise dread in their day-to-day lives. In advancing this argument, the essay surveys three interrelated groups of allegories: one in which Dread is a messenger from hell, one in which Dread guards the doorway to the self or a society, and one in which Dread sows social dysfunction. In addition to contextualizing the brief but pivotal personification of Dread in passus 2 of Piers Plowman within this tradition, the essay contextualizes this passage in the mercurial discourse on dreadful didacticism scattered throughout the three major versions of Piers Plowman.
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