Response to Clopper’s “Langland and Allegory: A Proposition”.

Argues that Clopper’s focus on personification allegory should be broadened to incorporate the disciplinary paradigms behind allegorical composition, a veritable forma tractandi as rule-bound as other rhetorical protocols in the trivium, and which respects the modes of topical argument put forth by Cicero and Boethius (In Ciceronis Topica): “from the whole, from the enumeration of parts, from a sign, and from related things.” PPl “uses all these topics in its unfolding, allegorical narrative” in personification, yes, but also in typological and tropological allegory, covert political commentary, irony, and paranomasia.” What distinguishes this poem from other allegories, however, is its interior, conversational approach to the subject.