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Meddling with Makings’ and Will’s Work.

Meddling with Makings’ and Will’s Work.

B.Prol.1-4 becomes noteworthy and problematic in light of the common injunction to hermits to be isolated in prayer and contemplation, non-discursive, and without any need for writing. Imaginatif (12.16-28) rebukes the dreamer for meddling in activities not his business; Will, however, construes medlen in the sense of “to intermix,” and defends his poeticizing in the discourse of eremetic instruction to avoid sloth by alternating prayer with (manual) labor. Will, however, turns the distinction into one that equates prayer and work, poetry and play, with no provision made for manual labor, in a fashion that would produce just those vanae cogitationes, sleep and dreams, the hermit is meant to avoid.