The Columbia History of British Poetry by Carl Woodring, James Shapiro Page A

its author or setting. It looks back to Chaucer and Lydgate for its style, meter (rime royal) and inspiration, and provides a clear example of self-confident didactic allegory: but its serenity is achieved only by means of divorcing the action entirely from the actual world. Savagery and chaos are explicitly excluded; politics appears only as a learned abstraction. The framing allegory is minimal: the narrator seeks wisdom, falls asleep, dreams of a meeting with the lady Sapi-

 

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ence, who then expounds to him all of the various subdepartments of wisdom available to man. The first and most effective book describes the crucial role of divine wisdom in the restoration of humanity through the Incarnation and redemption: it takes the form of a retelling of the traditional story of the daughters of God, Truth, Justice, Mercy, and Peace (from Psalm 85, Vulgate Psalm 84) who quarrel bitterly over the appropriateness of forgiving mankind for the original sin. Only the intervention of divine wisdom, Sapience herself, is able to solve the hopeless dilemma of the celestial relations between Justice and Mercy; and she recounts this tale as her greatest triumph. The poet has selected from a variety of Latin sources the fundamental units of his story, but he combines them with a moving and dramatic skill to produce an effect completely different from Langland.
The poet of the Court introduces the daughters at a different moment in sacred history, before the Incarnation, not after the Crucifixion; his rendering focuses on the arguments and the miraculous solution. The daughters first appear arguing their case before the throne of God: Mercy in bitter grief pleading for wretched man, Truth and Justice stating in measured terms the case for his continuing punishment, Peace insisting that she cannot live with discord, until Mercy collapses into a swoon at the impasse. Peace feels her "case" is lost; she delivers a magnificent valedictory speech to all the powers of heaven as she departs into exile. Then the three hierarchies of angels plead for the prisoner, mankind; Sapience offers to solve the dilemma by making the Son of God into man in order to restore his brethren to their former legal status; the angel delivers the message to Mary and the redemption follows. Jesus, on his triumphant return to heaven revives Mercy and restores Peace; the four sisters kiss each other. It is a careful and touching rendering of the bookish and legalistic side of medieval theology; since law was held to be universal, writers took great delight in demonstrating that even the actions of God could be seen as performed in accordance with the dictates of human law, although of course they would have put it the other way round: human law is an imperfect reflection of the law of God, and hence can be used analogically to help us understand the ways of God. The Court 's poet delights in playing variations on legal systems deployed as images: mankind is a traitor, Jesus wins by right of conquest as well as by purchase; he displays his legal title to man after his triumphant return. As theology, this was already very old-fashioned when the Court was written, but as a didac-

 

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tic vehicle, it is very effective. Allegory here fulfils its traditional function of explaining the abstract in terms of the concrete, without equating the twoand Sapience pauses in her narration to assure her audience that this is allegory, not history.
The same story in Langland is presented entirely differently: his daughters are mysterious figures who approach each other from the four corners of the earth in the darkness that follows the Crucifixion. What the Court author tries to express in terms of pathos and detailed argument, Langland presents as mystery and riddle. His Mercy, "a meke thyng with alle," is full of calm confidence and explains to Truth what the light before Hell means; Peace comes "pleyinge" bearing a letter from Love that explains the redemption. Truth