Reading the Z-text of Piers Plowman

Answering the who, what, where, when, and why of a medieval manuscript can be like trying to solve a who-done-it without that convenient answer key supplied by the author. Imagine then, that the same who-done-it exists in fragments. Such is the case of the 14th century work Piers Plowman, composed by William Langland in several successive stages and extant in not one, not two, not three, but four versions which vary significantly in length and sometimes content: the A-, B-, C-, and Z-texts. Scholars have been debating the relation between the first three versions of the text for well over a century, and with the discovery of the Z-text in the 1980s the conversation became even more complex.  The Z- text is of greatly contested authorship and complicates our understanding of Piers Plowman as a radical, reform-minded text.

British Library, Harley MS 2376, f.1r; England, 1st half of the 15th century. Opening page to William Langland’s C-text of Piers Plowman, the final revision of this work.

The A-, B-, and C- texts (c. 1370, 1378-9, and 1386 respectively) are widely regarded as the work of a single author, William Langland, who appears as the main character Will in the text. Will falls asleep in the Malvern Hills, lulled by the sweet trickle of a nearby stream, and enters the world of Christian allegory. As the work unfolds, we can see Langland’s deep concern for the state of Christianity and the corruption which could destroy its true tenets. Many scholars view Piers Plowman as a work highly appealing to the followers of John Wyclif, an Oxford philosopher and theologian who called for Church reform, arguing against what he regarded as the worldliness of the medieval Church and notably denying the doctrine of transubstantiation as his views progressed; Wyclif also argued for lay access to vernacular scripture, condemned the papacy and the Church hierarchy (particularly monasticism), and denied the validity of the cult of the saints.  He highly esteemed evangelical poverty and criticized the Church’s failure to adhere to this ideal. In Piers Plowman, William Langland displays a great concern for the plight of poor, hard-working Christians who often suffer because of the opulence and corruption of the higher classes of aristocrats and clerics.

Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.3.14 fol. 1v; 14th century; image of ploughing from William Langland’s Piers Plowman.  Unlike most contemporary images of peasants which portrayed their subjects as grotesque, the faces and disposition of these are pleasant and wholesome.

 Within the Z-text of Piers Plowman, found in MS Bodley 851, we can find an inscription which identifies the manuscript as the property of Brother John Wells, a Monk of Ramsey. We have a likely candidate for the identity of this John Wells, namely, an Oxford scholar and opponent of Wyclif. To add another layer of intrigue, Wells is also the satirized subject of a pro-Wycliffite macaronic verse published on a broadside in 1382 which appears to refer to Piers Plowman (see Kerby-Fulton, “Confronting the Poet-Scribe Binary,” 498-499).  What is an active opponent of Wyclif doing with a manuscript of Piers Plowman included in his personal anthology?

MS Bodleian 851, fol. 124r; England, 15th century. This image is from the sole manuscript of the Z- text.

In fact, recent scholarship has pointed to the author of the Z-text as an enthusiastic imitator of Langland rather than Langland himself. Significantly, the Z-text contains several passages portraying very orthodox views on the sacraments which are less prominent in other versions of Piers Plowman. For example, in a very orthodox move, the Z-text uniquely contains these lines highlighting the importance of the mass and the Eucharist:

[God’s word] maketh the messe ant the masse that men vnderfongeth / For Godus body ant ys blod, buyrnes to saue
(Passus Quintus, ll.37-38).

Lines such as these may point to the creator of the Z-text as one who greatly admired Langland’s work, but who sought to add moments into the text which reinforce the orthodox view of the centrality of sacraments in the medieval church.   Analyzing moments such as these may bring us closer in solving this medieval who-done-it, and I hope to explore this issue in future work.

Maj-Britt Frenze
PhD Candidate
Medieval Institute
University of Notre Dame

Works for Further Reading:

Fuller, Karrie. “The Craft Of The ‘Z-Maker’: Reading The Z Text’s Unique Lines In Context.”    The Yearbook of Langland Studies 27 (2013): 15–43.

Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. “Confronting the Scribe-Poet Binary: The Z Text, Writing Office     Redaction, and the Oxford Reading Circles.” In New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall, edited by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John J. Thompson, and Sarah Baechle, 489–515. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014.

Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn. “Piers Plowman.” In The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, edited by David Wallace. Cambridge ; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Rigg, A.G. and Charlottes Brewer, Ed. Piers Plowman: The Z Version. Toronto: PIMS, 1983.

 

 

Owls: Always a Hoot?

Owl, Book of Hours, London, c. 1460; British Library, Harley MS 2887, f. 29r; © The British Library

Today, owls are usually associated with wisdom. Their depictions in modern iconography range from majestic hunters to cute messengers à la Harry Potter. The convention of associating these nocturnal birds with wisdom goes all the way back to ancient Greeks and Romans depicting owls with the goddess of wisdom, Athena/Minerva. However, owl symbolism has not continuously had such positive connotations; in fact, in Medieval England, they were drastically different.

Owls have a strong presence in medieval fables and poems, many of them associating owls with the darkness and uncleanliness. Medieval poets took biblical references to owls as inspiration. For example, Job in his sorrow is referred to as the companion of owls, linking owls with mourning. In Leviticus, owls are mentioned as unclean birds. Building on these negative associations, medieval beast poems include violence towards owls. In Cuono of St. Nabor’s fable “The Peacock and the Owl,” a white peacock, symbolizing light and goodness, is violently murdered by an “envious owl” (Ziolkowski 245), and then a violent curse is wished upon the owl to avenge the death of the beautiful peacock. In the same vein, in the often-repeated story of the owlet in the hawk’s nest, the owl’s true identity is discovered when it fouls the nest—and then it is thrown out of the nest and dismembered by magpies and crows (Mann 178).

Anthropomorphic owl meant to resemble a Jew; bestiary, 2nd quarter of the 13th century, England; British Library, Harley MS 4751, f. 47 r; © The British Library

A more disturbing element of owl’s negative symbolism is their association with anti-Semitism. Owls, who are day-blind and live in darkness, were used to represent Jews in medieval England, who were said to have rejected the light of Christ and live in the uncleanliness of religious blasphemy. This accounts for the anthropomorphic appearance of some manuscript drawings of owls: they were sometimes given hooked noses to resemble Jews, and their horns represent the horned hats Jews were forced to wear.

Not all mentions of owls are completely negative, however. The Aberdeen bestiary presents a positive moralization of owls, saying that they represent Christ, who lived in the darkness (or away from view, like the owl) because he wanted to save sinners who also lived in darkness away from the light of God.

One of the most well-know medieval literary owls is in the poem The Owl and the Nightingale. The Owl and the Nightingale offer retellings of some of Marie de France’s fables, illustrating the popularity of animal fables. Significantly, the Nightingale recites the fable of the owl in the hawk’s nest to emphasize the inescapability of nature over nurture: the owl is recognized because it can’t escape its unclean nature despite being raised by a different bird. However, the poem gives the well-known story a twist, turning the usual moral condemnation of the owl on its head. The owl counters that it cannot be at fault for a nature that is common to all infants—even humans.

Owl symbolism continued to have negative associations even after the medieval period. During the Reformation, they came to be associated with Catholics, and later with Puritans (Hirsch 151)—generally with the vilified religious group du jour. Negative symbolism continued into the early modern period: in several of Shakespeare’s plays, the owl is an evil omen. Though the owl has much more positive connotations today, its history is plagued by darkness and negativity.

Owl and other birds decorating the bottom of a page; psalter and hours, France (Arras), c. 1300; British Library, Yates Thompson MS 15, f. 96r; © The British Library

Anne Marie Blieszner
MA Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame

Works Cited

Hirsch, Brett D. “From Jew to Puritan: The Emblematic Owl in Early English Culture.” “This Earthly Stage”: World and Stage in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Brett Hirsch and Christopher Wortham, Eds. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010.

Mann, Jill. From Aesop to Reynard: Beast Literature in Medieval Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Ziolkowski, Jan M. Talking Animals: Medieval Latin Beast Poetry, 750-1150. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993.

 

 

The Temptation and the Agony in Swete Susan’s Five-Stanza Garden

There is something curious and charming about an Old Testament classic receiving a courtly treatment (and not just in poetry, as any medieval tapestry admirer can attest. For a medieval tapestry rendering of Susannah and the Elders, see below).

“Susannah and the Elders” Tapestry from the Victoria and Albert Museum. Ca. 1500, Belgium. Materials: wool, silk. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

This semester I was very enchanted by my encounter with The Pistil of Swete Susan. In this fourteenth-century retelling of Susannah and the Elders from the thirteenth chapter of Daniel, a narrative of resolute tenacity emerges, almost startlingly, from beneath a veil of lush alliterative verse. Contributing most notably to an initial and misleading association of Susannah and Joachim with an overindulged and naive version of noblesse and splendor is the speaker’s five-stanza elaboration upon that iconic emblem of courtly wealth and leisure, the garden. This elaboration marks a very substantial and deliberate departure from the one line that communicates the garden in the likely source texts, and it cannot be ignored. Though the significance of this disproportionately elaborate moment in the medieval adaptation has been the source of debate, it is likely that centuries of readers have been captivated with the Edenic association that the garden’s verdant portrait ushers into the Susannah story, and of course, in a narrative that also centrally features the theme of temptation, readers would have recalled the Genesis story. Though scholarship has cast Susannah as the Eve figure in the Genesis story, my research questions whether this might be an unfair association, and explores the idea that medieval audiences may have actually viewed the elders as the Eve figures—and might even have viewed Susannah as a Christological figure—gestures, informed by the garden elaboration, which would radically and fascinatingly contradict rigid gender stereotypes of the time period.

Under the umbrella of this primary topic, I also explore some subtopics. For example, I look at this poem’s version of an ideal medieval woman—for though Susannah is “wlonkest in weede”—or in other words, fashionable—the poem emphasizes her education and intellect more than it emphasizes her stylishness. I also look at The Pistil of Swete Susan’s place in an emerging medieval theme of ageism towards the elderly. For, in fourteenth century medieval literature, no longer is the elderly figure associated with sagacity, but he or she is now deemed deceitful and corrupt. I further discuss how the garden elaboration explicates these subtopics.

For me, though, the centerpiece of the poem is not the lush and flowing treatment of the tangled garden, but a moment of profound and moving straightforwardness that the juxtaposition with the garden serves only to emphasize. It is the moment of exchange between Susannah and Joachim after Susannah has been condemned. This moment is characterized not by a reaction of anger or fear that one would expect from pampered and entitled noblesse, but simply by the humble, and indeed Christological, imagery of hands and feet. As Susannah kisses Joachim’s hand and Joachim gently removes the fetters from Susannah’s feet, husband and wife become Christ for one another, and, in a gesture deeply countercultural to medieval beliefs, marriage becomes a stunningly sanctifying vocation.

Thei toke the feteres of hire feete,
And evere he cussed that swete.
“In other world schul we mete.”
Seide he no mare.

“The Pistel of Swete Susan”: 257-260

from Heroic Women from the Old Testament in Middle English Verse, edited by Russell A. Peck.

Honora Kenney
MA Candidate
Department of English
University of Notre Dame