Poverty as the Politics of Transcendence in Piers Plowman

Poverty as the Politics of Transcendence in Piers Plowman

本論文聚焦於十四世紀中古英詩《農夫皮爾斯》裡貧窮與超越性之間的緊密關係，以闡述詩中宗教與社會政治的連結。論文提出，對威廉‧藍朗（William Langland）而言，貧窮作為一種超越性是具有政治意義的，而這個意義和詩人在《農》詩中所要表達的對社會改革之觀點有關。在文中，我將從《農》詩中的抵抗概念探討這個意義；藍朗認為，抵抗概念影響精神性正直介入世上政治社會的方法。抵抗是一種反覆出現，且具警戒性的政治介入形式。對藍朗而言，在政治行動的宗教性基礎中，抵抗強烈代表一種對世俗眾多權力的對立，而這對立是頑強且持久的；同時抵抗也藉由對堅忍貧窮和正直受苦的頌讚而得到鞏固。

This essay focuses on the identification of poverty with transcendence in the fourteenth-century Middle English poem Piers Plowman, as a way of exploring the relation between the religious and the socio-political in the poem. It suggests that poverty as transcendence has a political meaning for the poet William Langland and that such a meaning is relevant to the poet’s vision of social change in Piers. In the essay, I locate such a meaning in the idea of resistance in Piers, which for Langland informs the way the spiritually righteous engage with political society in this world. Resistance is a form of political engagement that is perennial and ever vigilant. In Langland’s vision of the religious basis of political action, resistance identifies closely with an unyielding, unfailing opposition to worldly plenitude of power and is underpinned by the celebration of patient poverty and righteous suffering.