Animate Oppositions

Opposition is especially pertinent to Piers Plowman, a poem whose allegory is characterized by markedly dialectical and ‘negating’ modes of procedure; opposition both drives Langland’s debates and shapes the relation of those debates to each other. The chapter claims that Langland is inward with the tradition of personification debate shaped by elementary Aristotelian theories about ‘opposites’. A Langlandian complication, however is that alongside the debating opponents there are also other debating companions with whom one of the opponents may also share forms of likeness: here, the allegorical play of opposition works in conjunction with the allegorical play of likeness. We see this in the debate of the ‘four daughters of God’, where Mercy opposes Truth and Rightwisnesse opposes Peace, but Mercy and Peace also have much in common, as do Truth and Rightwisnesse. The main body of the chapter analyses three dialogues or debates involving the multi-dimensional personification Conscience. These debates allow Langland to do some complex investigative work on Conscience, whom he situates and re-situates in relation to different interlocutors. Conscience opposes the corrupt Meed, the vulnerable Haukyn and finally, at the barn of Unity, a series of dubious figures culminating in a flattering friar. But in these debates Conscience also shares features with a series of companions: Reason, Patience, and, in B.20, Peace and Hende Speeche. Langland takes Aristotelian oppositionality and the personification debate to a whole new level of investigative activity.