GSU: ENGL 3300

April 30, 2014

Piers Plowman

Folk-tales, in general, are many different types of stories that have heroes, mystical events, adventures, and morals at the end. Two famous poems of medieval literature, Beowulf and Piers Plowman, fall into the folk-tale narrative. Both of these stories show what it means to be a hero through the folk-tales narrative of their respective time. In the time of the falling pagan faith, the hero is someone of high birthright and fought to become a great warrior. Brutality is what makes this hero worthy of respect and a generosity with gold to lavish on his fighting party makes him worthy of love. Once Christianity became more intertwined with everyday life, the folk-tale hero altered and became one of the everyday heroes. These heroes are ones who live his life in accordance to the faith. Through this analysis, I will show how the folk-tale narrative has expanded from the warrior-hero-centric tale to one with an average person becoming the hero of the tale.

Before delving into the expansion from the warrior-hero tales to the everyday-hero tales, let’s begin with what truly makes up a folk-tale plot. The name “folk-tale” when broken down really mean a tale for the folk. These are tales for the general, everyday person living within that time period as explained within Lüthi’s “Function and Significance of the Folklore.” He states,

“The very appearance of the folktale should provide evidence as to its function. The form of a work of art of such extraordinary wide diffusion is determined by two factors. It is dependent on what type of person creates and cultivates it. At the same time, much more significantly, it is dependent on the needs of the audience” (Lüthi pg 81).

Generally, it takes four parts to make the folk-tale: a hero, an adventure, magical elements, and a lesson for the audience. According to other scholars, there can be as many as six categories, as explained by David Buchan: “The legend proper has six, often overlapping, categories: aetiological, religious, supernatural, historical, personal, and place” (Buchan p 980). For the sake of this essay, the categories have been kept to the above: a hero, an adventure, magical elements, and a lesson. Throughout this essay these categories will be separated to depict the differences of the warrior-hero and the everyday Christian hero.

Beginning with introductions to both of these poems, both have different types of openings that set the stage of what is to come for the audience. From Beowulf we have, “Listen! We have heard of the glory in bygone days of the folk-kings of the spear-Danes how those noble lords did lofty deeds” (Beowulf pg 47). This introduction allows the reader to know that this poem is generally spoken, giving us an image of the oral tradition. The narrator begins by telling everyone around him to be quiet so that he can tell them a story of a great man from a long time ago who achieved greatness. Beowulf allows the teller to jump right into the action, which lends itself to what kind of audience that this story is normally told to: one that has to be told to shut-up and pay attention to this amazing story of heroics.

The introduction for Piers Plowman was a bit more poetic in its introduction with, “In summertime, when the sun was fine, I clothed myself in garments as if I were a sheep. Outfitted like a hermit whose works are unholy…I nodded off to sleep, it flowed so merrily. Then I began to dream a marvelous dream…” (Piers Plowman pg 348). This story begins with a traditional dream vision narrative that soon became popular when folktales started to be written down instead of being told orally. Dream visions are a form of frame narrative that allows the author to tell his story without having to claim ownership of the narrative if it were to be viewed negatively. This is more of a story that wades its audience in, suggesting that this story may have been more read than told orally.

Concerning heroes, let’s begin with the pagan-hero-type of Beowulf. It is well known that the story had been rewritten through the Christian lens in order for the story to carry on in the written word. However, the evidence of the earlier prototype of a hero was well defined throughout this work. The character Beowulf is shown as a strong warrior of honorable family lineage: “He who among men was the strongest of might in those days of this life” (Beowulf pg 57). He was one for boasts of his greatness, as shown when he returned after defeating Grendel and the hag, “Beowulf spoke, son of Ecgtheow: ‘Freely and gladly have we fought this fight, done this deed of courage, daringly faced this unknown power. I would have much preferred that you might have seen the foe himself decked in his finery, fallen and exhausted!’” (Beowulf pg 59). Through his brutal might, Beowulf came to great fame by defeating the monsters that have been plaguing a neighboring kingdom for years, and also became a great ruler through showing his strength.

Within the confines of Christianity, the story of Piers Plowman goes very differently, but had the same effect on its audience. The hero of this story is both Piers, the guide of the narrator in his search for truth, and Christ, who dies as a humble man trying to spread the truth. During the time of this story’s creation, the Church of England was going through the Protestant Reformation and “…the Reformation regarded paganism as the basic corruption of man” (Cocchiara pg 46). The Story of Piers Plowman did a total overhaul on what the common people, and the populace in general, knew what it meant to be a good person in the eyes of God instead of how to be a good leader of men. This story allowed people to see what they can do to be glorious without leading the life a warrior.

Though Beowulf was a warrior and Piers was a simple plowman, both of these men were able to go on an adventure or help someone on their own adventure respectfully. With Beowulf’s station, it was expected of him to travel and fight, as stated in these lines: “In their war-trappings they seem worthy of noble esteem; notable indeed is that chief who has shown these soldiers the way hither” (Beowulf pg 51). He was considered to be the best of his men and, “His separation from the world in those days of this life would have to be miserable, and that alien spirit would travel from into the keeping of friends” (Beowulf pg 57). This is during the time of his battle with Grendel and early in his reign as king. In his youth, he was expected to go on adventures and always win. In a reality where a young and health Beowulf dies, even with in battle, would have greatly hurt his people; in this story Beowulf has to do great things in his youth and live in order for there to be a heroic history for the English people. When the time came for him to face the dragon, Beowulf had grown older and he knew that he would most likely not make it home alive; that is why he brings weapons with him to this battle: 

“I would not bear a sword or weapon to this serpent, if I knew any other way I could grapple with this great beast after my boast, as I once did with Grendel; but I expect the heat of battle-flames there, steam and venom; therefore shield and byrnie will I have on me.” (Beowulf pg 79).

Within the Piers Plowman narrative, Piers begins by leading the adventure for the narrator, whom we later have named Will, in the search of truth in this world. By the eighteenth passus, the story becomes fully focused on the ending of Christ’s life and his adventure into death. In this passage, Christ’s body itself becomes feared after death: “But there was no person bold enough to touch God’s body; because he was a knight and king’s son, God granted it that time…except this blind knight, who stabbed him through the heart” (Piers Plowman pg 354). Within death, he has become a knight, and a highly looked upon person in medieval society and inspiring awe: “In heaven, and on earth, and how into Hell He plans to go, to understand total woe, He who knows total joy” (Piers Plowman pg 356). Now, Christ plans to push his adventure further and descend into Hell to gather up the people who believed in his coming, but died before he could save them, “‘[all] that man has done wrong, I, a man, shall put right” (Piers Plowman pg 359) .

The earth-quaking event after Christ’s death leads to the next category that both of these stories fill: mystical events that interweave throughout the hero’s adventure, “[from] a comparison between the ‘marvelous’ Christian and the ‘marvelous’ pagan a whole series of tracts on comparative religions, mythologies, and rites came into being, although it was frequently a matter…of a partisan historiography” (Cocchiara pg 46). These mystical events brought more excitement and a level of awe to the characters who wouldn’t have had that respect otherwise. Beginning now with Piers Plowman. The author writes, “’It is finished,’ said Christ, and began to swoon, Piteously and pale, like a prisoner dying. The lord of life and light then closed his eyes…and the whole world shook” (Piers Plowman pg 353). During Christ’s act of dying, he appears feeble and pale; he is called a prisoner and he is not painted in the light of a martyr of the lives of men and women of the earth until the earth shakes with the understood anger of God. It is at this point that no one wants to touch his body to bring it down from the cross. That is, until the blind captain Longinus stabbed Jesus in the heart to make sure of his death. When the blood flows from the wound and ends up in Longinus’ eyes, a miracle happened and the captain regained his sight, “For it bore God’s blessed body for our remedy, and it scares off the fiend—for such is its power” (Piers Plowman pg 360).

Continuing with Beowulf, his battles are against a bog monster, a bog hag, and a dragon. Each beast is said to have great strength and wit, and the dragon is to be giant and a fire breather. During the battle with the dragon, Beowulf is able to kill the beast but in turn had to sacrifice his own life: “When the wound which the earth-dragon had worked on him began to burn and swell, he soon realized a poison welled…” (Beowulf pg 82). In both of the represented works, the magical events always follow along with a fight or death.

One of the final categories is having a moral ending. Much like a fable, many folk-tales have some type of moral ending that can be dictated based on the audience that is reading or hearing the narrative. This form of folk-tale plotline has a foundation in telling history, “The first of these, folk narrative, bisects into the fictional and the non-fictional genres…” (Buchan pg 978). The moral of Beowulf can be understood through both his death scene and the funeral scene: “The decrees of fate I waited on earth, held well what was mine; I sought no intrigues, nor swore many false or wrongful oaths…the Ruler of men need not reproach me with the murder of kinsmen, when my life quits my body” (Beowulf pg 82). Here we find a dying Beowulf speaking to Wiglaf about all the bad things that he had not done in life: he didn’t swear many false oaths, he did not form secret bonds with anyone, and he never turned on his own people. Due to these acts of nobility, which were part of their social norm, Beowulf’s people mourned his death all the more because he was a true and just ruler by their standpoint. For his funeral, his people made special preparations as custom: “The people of the Geats then prepared for him a splendid pyre upon the earth, hung with battle-shields and helmets…the wood smoke rose, the roaring fire mingled with weeping—the wind lay still—until it had broken that bone-house hot at the heart” (Beowulf pg 87). After his death he was given a hero’s funeral, and his name lived on for thousands of years as being a great king and warrior who fought to the death for his people.

Back to Piers Plowman, we see a slightly different moral:“[because] your champion knight, the best knight of you all declares himself beaten, just as Jesus wills. For this darkness is at an end, Death has been vanquished” (Piers Plowman pg 355). Now that Christ has fallen and is fighting until the third day to rise, he has become a knight in death against Lucifer where he was but a common man of God before: “‘[so] Lucifer, don’t believe that I seize them against the law; by right and reason, rather, I now ransom my lieges, ‘I come here not to destroy the law but to fulfill it’” (Piers Plowman pg 359). Christ now has gone a step further into claiming that he is king over all of the world, “[for] I would be an unnatural king if I didn’t help my kin…” (Piers Plowman pg 360)

From a king who died as a hero to become a man and a man who died a hero to become the king each of these stories have folk-tale plot narratives that consist of the same heroic story being told just at different times and to differing audiences. Before, the warrior hero was the person to strive to be and it would be a shame to die without seeing battle. As the middle ages went forward, there was a social and spiritual progression that made violence out to be an evil force and that we must all live more simply as Christ did. It was stated best by Lüthi: “The folktale gives its characters not things, but opportunities. It directs its characters toward places where something is to be accomplished, and it then showers it’s help on the person whom it finds to be ready for such an accomplishment—but only this person and no other” (Lüthi pg 86).

It is only when these characters are ready to face their greatest challenge are they set to face it: Beowulf and the dragon and Christ and Lucifer. Depending on the social norm of the society either the story can end with the death of a hero and no one there to take his place, as in Beowulf, or there is an understanding that the hero has already risen and is always protecting us from evil like in Piers Plowman: “When men rang bells for the resurrection—and I woke up at once…” (Piers Plowman pg 360). It is here, at the ending of the story, where the audience is to make their own decision on whether they would rather be a hero in life or in death based on their own beliefs and practices. The audience is also faced with the worry of being a valued person, strong, and brave or being a good person right by God.

As stated in “Folklore Literature,” “The modern legend is a story told as true that circulates in contemporary society and exhibits traditional variation” (Buchan pg 980). This is true in both modern tales and of past tales. As these tales circulate through the society that has a need for this story, they become as true as we believe history to be. These characters are heroes in their own right and I would go so far as to say that they are as much real heroes as people in the real world that we have structured around ourselves. These folk-tales allow the audience to experience otherworldly situations and allow us to question ourselves as people as stated by Lüthi: “[Folktales] take on the task of perceiving and giving verbal expression to what really happens in this world…In this view, things become light, weightless, and transparent as the deceptive veil of apparent reality falls away” (Lüthi pg 87). No matter how the stories change, with epic hero warriors to everyday men doing the work for God or being Christ himself, these stories matter to people. Each hero, no matter what kind of hero, gives people a sense of belonging; and thus we can categorize ourselves based on the hero that we choose to follow.

Beowulf Image

Work Cited:

Buchan, David. (1990) “Chapter 72: folk Literature.” Encyclopedia of Literature & Criticism, (page 976-990). Taylor & Francis Ltd/Books. Literary Reference Center. Web. 29 April 2014.

Cocchiara, Giuseppe. (1952) “Chapter III: Europe Between Religion and Superstition: 2. The Reformation and the Comparison between the ‘Marvelous’ Christian and the ‘Marvelous’ Pagan.” John McDaniel (Trans.). The History of Folklore in Europe. (pg. 45-47). Philadelphia, PN: ISHI.

Liuzza, R. M. (Trans.). (2009). “Beowulf.” D. LePan, J. McCue, L. Cardiff, C. Franklin & M. Rooney (Eds.), The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1: The Medieval Period (2nd ed., pg. 47-92). Buffalo, NY: Broadview Press.

Lüthi, Max. (1982). “Function and Significance of the Folklore.” John Niles (Trans.), The European Folktale: form and nature (pg. 81-106). Philadelphia: ISHI.

William, L. (2009). “Piers Plowman.” D. LePan, J. McCue, L. Cardiff, C. Franklin & M. Rooney (Eds.), The Broadview Anthology of British Literature: Volume 1: The Medieval Period (2nd ed., pg. 345-360). Buffalo, NY: Broadview Press.