Allegory and Mirror: Tradition and Structure in Middle English Literature

Abstract

Wimsatt classifies works of Middle English literature as examples of either personification allegory on one hand or mirror (encyclopedic compilations) on other, comparing them with classical and medieval Continental models and characterizing them by their unity, comprehensiveness, and/or didactic functions. He discusses works by Chaucer, Langland, Jean de Meun, Boethius, Vincent of Beauvais, Peraldus, and many others, including Gower. Ostensibly structured as a summa of sin, Gower's CA resists (or fails), according to Wimsatt, its primary principle of organization: it neither follows systematic arrangement of, for example, Ancrene Riwle or Robert Mannyng's Handlyng Synne, nor is it as thorough or inclusive in its treatment of sins and their subsets. The treatment of gluttony in Book 6, which Wimsatt offers as an example, discusses only two species of sin and then digresses into tales witchcraft, albeit interesting ones. In short, stories themselves are chief merit of CA (158), rather than its organization or unity. MO, on other hand, is more successfully thorough and consistent as a mirror of society: about 8,000 of 31,000 lines are devoted to a systematic condemnation of estates, and most of the remainder of poem is taken up with descriptions of Seven Deadly Sins with their offspring and of seven offsetting virtues and their progeny (165). Wimsatt summarizes analysis of decadence of monks (166) in MO (20833-21180) to illustrate Gower's technique with estates satire, and mentions that VC is also structured as a series of complaints presented against Three Estates (167). [MA]

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