| Abstract | Paper -a:
Langland might believe the 14th Century Church to be spiritually poor, but he assumes an audience rich in Christian understanding and Bible nuance. Throughout Piers Plowman, the poet places Biblical waymarks, such as 'Marc meneþ in þe Gospel', to guide and reassure his audience of the way to salvation.
Langland's waymarks are often poorly recognised by present-day scholars: the wealth of Bible contexts currently lies fallow. Yet, they provide an abundant harvest without which the fertile soil; the affluence of interpretation becomes sparse and impoverished.
This paper illustrates Langland's technique, and reveals the political polemic and scholarly resource of Bible contexts.
Paper -b:
Piers Plowman makes an explicit connection between the Eucharist and the Christ Child, imagining him in a way that is sacramental and salvific. The 'bloed of a Barn' passage in Passus 19 manifests a belief that the sacraments are required for salvation and that the Eucharist is the real body and blood of Christ. Moreover, it exemplifies a way of imagining time that escapes from the rationalistic and, like the poem's desultory style, privileges the eternal over the temporal.
The Samaritan explains that man is beset by the robbers sin and death on the way of life: he can only be healed by Christ's blood. However, Will identifies the Samaritan as Jesus, though the Samaritan speaks of Jesus as a child who is yet to be born. In what time is this event located? Answering this central question of Passus 19 brings us to the heart of Langland's Christology and his understanding of history.
Paper -c:
My paper will look at how the human body becomes a symbol of greater social meaning in late medieval texts. I will look at how registers of physical violence in two popular genres of the Late Middle Ages, Passion literature and Arthurian romance, transfer this symbolic meaning in religious and cultural discourse. The first section on religious violence and the Passion narrative will examine the language used to describe the wound in Christ's side and other religious images, accompanied by a brief history of the Passion narrative and affective piety. The second section will then discuss the violent religious images that crossover into the military violence of the 14th century Arthurian romance, the Alliterative Morte Arthure. In conclusion, I will analyse the symbolism implied by the imagery my romance texts share with religious literature.
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