Religious Allegories

Brief survey of ME religious allegory in fourteenth century, distinguished in terms of those using “static allegorical devices” (buildings, charters, clothing, etc.) and those “suggesting process and change,” such as those drawing on Guillaume de Deguileville’s works. Of all ME works, “the subtlest in ideas and most varied in allegorical modes is PPl, which, like Pearl, concerns spiritual transformation; both poems show how language itself . . . reveals to man his spiritual purpose.”