Structure and Meaning of the ‘Visio’ in Piers Plowman

The Visio portrays a “bastard feudalism” in a state of decline. The common solution provided in each of its episodes is not to reform the outer apparatus of socio-political institutions, but must be provided by the inner dynamic of human moral activity. The narrative pattern of the Visio presents a figural representation of the unstable voluntas, which oscillates between doing good and doing evil over a middle ground, portrayed in turn as mankind, the kingdom, and the half-acre.