This dissertation explores the constitutive and epistemic
function of the trivium in bringing William Langland''s Piers
Plowman into signification--bothits significance and its ways of
signifying. It demonstrates that the problems of language/
signification, the trivium and the writing of poetry are closely
interrelated. The three verbal disciplines are not only
Langland''s intellectual frame of reference, they are also the
pre-text whereupon he inserts/asserts his own text. The first
chpater discusses the concerns of pedagogical and theoretical
grammars, focusing on their foundational role in the fomation of
a general awareness of the problems of language and the
verbalsign as a mediator of human knowledge. I examine how
Langland reflects upon the problems entailed by the grammatical
culture and how he uses grammaticalmetaphors to illustrate the
ideal orders of society and the relation between God and man.
Chapter 2 further shows that Langland repeatedly addresses the
tension between human word/reason and Christian faith. Despite
the productivity of logic in providing him with narratorial
structuring principles,especially the logical theories of topics
and supposition, Langland exploits theintellectual and religious
implications of the signifying capacity/incapacity of logic. If
logic is circumvented by the rigid maneuvering of scholastic
reason, rhetoric seems to offer a different dynamic appeal, and
this is the concern of chapter 3. In the face of a corrupted
rhetoric, Lagnland, followingAugustine, is searching for a
Christian rhetoric as a vital vehicle of truth. He reinvents the
basic tenets and concerns of classical rhetoric in the
contemporary socio-ethical fabric with an informing and
transforming Christian spirit, addressing rhetorical issues of
the importance of preaching, the spiritual relevance of
figurative language, and the mobilization of a mixture of style.
The poem is an allegory of Langland''s reflections upon the
intellectual habitat of the three verbal arts and of his attempt
to transcend their limitations through the plowing of the
Bible--God''s Word and the ultimateSignificator. The divine Word
informs and redeems the human word, and the poemenacts the
allegoresis of the human trivium toward hte divine Trivium/
Trinity.It is against this backdrop that we can fully appreciate
the dialectic plowing and pilgrimage of the human words and the
divine Word and thus in a better position to understand the
vocation of the poet and the ambition of his poem as a
vernacular, allegorical re-incarnation of the Word of God.