Piers Plowman Prologue - Passus One

My definition of a mystery story mostly aligns with Auden's ideas in The Guilty Vicarage. I believe a mystery story must involve a crime being committed (Auden's definition requires that the crime be a murder, but I personally believe that mysteries should not only be limited to murders), a detective investigating the case and gathering evidence, making deductions, and finding the perpetrator from a group of suspects. Auden states that the case must be properly resolved with the death or arrest of the perpetrator (the murderer in his case), and I agree with that. A crime story to me is a broader term that usually includes mystery stories. However, in this case, the process of identifying the criminal does not have to be the focus like it is in mystery stories.

So far, Piers Plowman does not fit into either of my definitions because as far as I can tell, no crime has been committed. The writing I found to be (somewhat unnecessarily) painful to read, and while the definitions along the margins do help somewhat, there are so many words that look like nonsense that at times I could not tell which word was being defined. This also made it a bit difficult to gather evidence about what was going on, since I can't analyze something if I'm busy trying to translate the poem into a language I can actually understand. From what I can tell, the narrator begins by falling asleep, and is currently describing a dream he has while he is sleeping. He describes some of the people he sees before meeting a woman who apparently symbolizes the Church. She advises him to seek truth and love others while constantly making biblical references. So far, the mystery to me is in the language of the poem, not in its contents, which are somewhat straightforward once the language is understood.