Speaking Without Speaking: The Safety of Allegory in Piers Plowman and the Consequences of Wycliffe’s Writings
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54536/ajlp.v1i1.8919Keywords:
Allegory, Consequence, Controversial Truth, Direct Speaking, Safety MechanismAbstract
This paper focuses on a way of speaking controversial religious and social truth which can reduce the degree of consequences of directly stated truth, and analyses the use of allegory in William Langland’s Piers Plowman as a relatively safer communication method compared to direct Wycliffite writings. It aims to find out a practical communication function of allegory used by Langland comparing it to the more direct writings of Wycliffe. Piers Plowman also includes dream vision, personification and symbolic figures to find out the distance between the author and the authority in revealing controversial truth. This paper follows a qualitative discourse analysis as well as a comparative method to study Piers Plowman and Wycliffe’s Bible as main sources, and Peter Sutton’s modern verse translation for best results. The findings reflect that Langland’s use of allegory does not make it just a simple literary device. Through dream-vision, personification, symbolic and allegorical events, Langland discusses controversial issues without directly addressing them which provides safer boundary between the author and the corrupt authority. Conversely, the study finds the harsh difficulties faced by Wycliffe as a result for discussing theological and religious communication more directly in his translations. The study does not claim that Wycliffe was punished but that his task became hard for being immediately noticeable to the authorities. This study concludes that allegory can apply a filter between the author and the criticized party to make a difference in the degree of consequences and reveal controversial criticism while keeping the author comparatively safer.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Md. Shahriar Mahmud Rakib, Md. Ta-seen Tahmid Sujon (Author)
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