The Idea of the Labyrinth from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages

Pp. 155-57, 203-05, 219: In remarks preliminary to a future study of the poem, the author suggests that PPl presents a subtle view of the world as an attractive but dangerous moral maze, in which the labyrinthine image of worldly life appropriately represents the situation of the people on the field. Will loses sight of the clue to understanding that Holy Church has offered as he becomes subject to the profusion of temptations on the plain. He journeys through the labyrinth of the fallen mind; in particular, the quest for the Three Do’s is especially maze-like. A reliable guide is found in Jesus, who offers a straight path to truth, but the poem ends where it began, in the maze of the world.