ABSTRACT
Traditional ideologies expressed the patterns through which self and world were perceived and understood. They depicted the features of legitimate authority and practice in different areas of the culture; they presented conventionally accepted beliefs, standards and values; they naturalized certain symbols and images which helped shape individual and collective experience. This chapter deals with the major social ideology of Langland's world. This envisaged society as a static hierarchy of estates, fixed in occupations which were organically related, mutually beneficial, harmonious and divinely ordained. The place of king and clergy in the Prologue may also be early signs in the poem of how extrinsic the major ideology has become. The clergy and religious institutions are immersed in the secular culture. Langland's imaginative receptivity to conflicts and social movement pushes the total context beyond the perceptual bounds of his traditional model.
