Piers Plowman Passus 4-5
[use either references to or quotations from the text, please! Mentioning the specific sections you don't understand will help me and your classmates give some ideas about it]
Passus 4 opens with the king ordering Conscience to kiss Mede, even though he spent the entirety of Passus 3 telling the king that he doesn't want to marry her. I found it strange that Wit and Wisdom are both on the side of Wrong, even though both are usually seen as positive traits (to me at least). The idea of making a distinction between Wisdom and Reason and pitting the two against each other is also interesting. Peace comes to the king with a list of the things of the terrible things that Wrong has done, such as raping and otherwise violating women and stealing his property: "And how he ravesched Rose, Reynolds love, / And Margaret of hure maydenhed, maugre hure chekys. / 'Bothe my geys and my grys his gadelynges fecches; / I dar not for fere of hym fytten ne chyde" (A, 4, 36-38). However, he then asks for him to be pardoned after Mede offers him gifts: "For Mede hath mad my mendes, I may no more axyn" (A, 4, 88). I personally find that a bit morally questionable, but it is fitting that Peace would value a peaceful resolution above everything else. However, the king proceeds to shut him down and then jails(?) Wrong after Reason agrees with his ideas. Reason then joins the king's council along with Conscience as the passus ends.
Chapter 5 begins with everyone going to church as the narrator/dreamer recovers from his acid trip. However, one trip apparently isn't enough, so after a short walk he takes another dose of whatever he's having and goes back to dreaming. He sees Conscience warning a crowd of doomsday and then calls for everyone to reform their lives. The personification of the Deadly Sins then (attempt) to come to confess (or at least most of then do, because apparently Wrath is never mentioned). Again, I liked how the Sins are personified and how they react the why I expected them to. For example, Sloth almost gives up halfway to church and takes a nap (A, 5, 211-212) and Gluttony ends up getting wasted at some bar instead of going to confess (A, 5, 156). The passage ends with the crowd crying for God/Jesus to save their sorry selves and for help in looking for Truth, who still has not made an appearance in the poem. In general, I found these chapters somewhat easier to comprehend. However, there are still some sections where I have no idea what is going on. The most frustrating sections to read were the confessions. While I could mostly understand the confessions of Envy, Sloth, and Gluttony, I found Covetousness' confession to be barely comprehensible. I have no idea what he is trying to say in his confession, and for some reason I was simply unable to decipher the language in that particular section, even with the definitions in the margins.
Passus 4 opens with the king ordering Conscience to kiss Mede, even though he spent the entirety of Passus 3 telling the king that he doesn't want to marry her. I found it strange that Wit and Wisdom are both on the side of Wrong, even though both are usually seen as positive traits (to me at least). The idea of making a distinction between Wisdom and Reason and pitting the two against each other is also interesting. Peace comes to the king with a list of the things of the terrible things that Wrong has done, such as raping and otherwise violating women and stealing his property: "And how he ravesched Rose, Reynolds love, / And Margaret of hure maydenhed, maugre hure chekys. / 'Bothe my geys and my grys his gadelynges fecches; / I dar not for fere of hym fytten ne chyde" (A, 4, 36-38). However, he then asks for him to be pardoned after Mede offers him gifts: "For Mede hath mad my mendes, I may no more axyn" (A, 4, 88). I personally find that a bit morally questionable, but it is fitting that Peace would value a peaceful resolution above everything else. However, the king proceeds to shut him down and then jails(?) Wrong after Reason agrees with his ideas. Reason then joins the king's council along with Conscience as the passus ends.
Chapter 5 begins with everyone going to church as the narrator/dreamer recovers from his acid trip. However, one trip apparently isn't enough, so after a short walk he takes another dose of whatever he's having and goes back to dreaming. He sees Conscience warning a crowd of doomsday and then calls for everyone to reform their lives. The personification of the Deadly Sins then (attempt) to come to confess (or at least most of then do, because apparently Wrath is never mentioned). Again, I liked how the Sins are personified and how they react the why I expected them to. For example, Sloth almost gives up halfway to church and takes a nap (A, 5, 211-212) and Gluttony ends up getting wasted at some bar instead of going to confess (A, 5, 156). The passage ends with the crowd crying for God/Jesus to save their sorry selves and for help in looking for Truth, who still has not made an appearance in the poem. In general, I found these chapters somewhat easier to comprehend. However, there are still some sections where I have no idea what is going on. The most frustrating sections to read were the confessions. While I could mostly understand the confessions of Envy, Sloth, and Gluttony, I found Covetousness' confession to be barely comprehensible. I have no idea what he is trying to say in his confession, and for some reason I was simply unable to decipher the language in that particular section, even with the definitions in the margins.
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