ABSTRACT
The first dream of Piers Plowman opens with a familiar view of the cosmos: heaven above, hell below, and human beings 'in the middle.'4 The protagonist sees 'into the eest an heigh to the sonne / ... a tour on a toft ... /... A deep dale bynethe, a dongeon therinne, / With depe diches' [toward the east, on high to the sun / a tower on a hill ... / A deep dale beneath, a donjon/dungeon therein, / With deep ditches] (Pro. 13-16). 'A fair feeld ful of folk fond I ther bitwene,' he says (Pro. 17). Holy Church obliquely identifies the 'fair feeld' as 'this erthe' (1. 7). Later, she explains that the 'dongeon in the dale that dredful is of sighte' (1. 59)5 'is the castel of care' (61) where 'wonyeth a wight that Wrong is yhote, / Fader of falshede' pives a person who is called Wrong, father of falseness] (63-4); she seems to identify the tower as 'hevene, /Ther [where] Treuthe is in Trinitee' (1.132-3).6
