ABSTRACT
The theme of formalism in Langland’s poem is intertwined with the theme of hypocrisy. Langland’s sense of the instability and uncertainty of works and of words, considered as external correlatives of the hidden will, intensifies in the second and third visions to the point of exasperation. The chief allegorical image of the good life in the vision of the pilgrimage to Truth is contained in passus vi, in the episode of Piers Plowman and his half-acre. A simple, untroubled life of prayer, food and sleep seems, at the least, a long way off. The first is dramatic and pictorial in method: it presents the good life through the events and personages of the pilgrimage to Truth. The second is abstract and ratiocinative: it tells of the Dreamer’s search for Dowel, and consists almost entirely of conversations with intellectual powers.
