Reformist Apocalypticism and Piers Plowman by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER nowadays, especially considering the outrageous prices ofbooks, this one included. Equally in God's Image is not an easy book to read. The general organization, already mentioned (p. 1) is very good. The chapters so called are sometimes not developed essays but assembled notes placed together. The prose style ofthe unsigned Introduction is involuted and lacking in lucidity, though the framingdevice ofintroducing chapters is a good idea. The strengths ofthis book lie in its stated argument, which it certainly defends, and in the enormous breadth ofits material. Its chiefweakness is unevenness, both in form and in quality ofresearch. It comes across as a collection with essays sometimes overargued without up-to-date schol­ arship plus bits and pieces which, however well written, needed better integration into the book as a whole. BEYERLY BOYD University ofKansas KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON. ReformistApocalypticism andPiers Plowman. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990. Pp. xii, 256. $49.50. Not long ago a reviewer in this journal wondered whether a strong Lang­ land reading might issue from a book "more explicitly on eschatological than on antifraternal traditions." He was prescient, for this book fills that bill. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton wants to consider central aspects of Piers Plowman in light of "reformist apocalypticism," a prophetic stance that excoriates present abuses and foresees imminent miraculous earthly trans­ formation. According to Kerby-Fulton, reformist apocalypticism reverbe­ rated in Langland's England through the Latin writings of Hildegard of Bingen, Robert ofUzes, Bridget ofSweden,John ofRupescissa, and many pseudonymous or anonymous Joachite authors. She is "arguing [not] for the influence of any particular writer on Langland" but rather for "the influence ofcertain kinds ofprophetic and apocalyptic writing." Address­ ing those who might deem the entire Latin repertoire ofHildegard,Robert, and so on too esoteric to have had any influence on a minor cleric ofthe Malvern Hills who wrote in the vernacular, she proposes that either Lang­ land had once read many books, albeit no longer having them at reach, or 164 REVIEWS else had learned much from word-of-mouth transmission. At any rate, she is confident that scholars who read Piers Plowman solely in the context of other Middle English vernacular literary texts have missed much, since "Langland's [apocalyptic] sources had to be Latin, Continental, and clerical." Kerby-Fulton offers four main blocks of argument (I list them in an order different from her own). First, she proposes that knowledge of medieval apocalyptic traditions elucidates Langland's form and mode of expression. PiersPlowman is an "apocalypse," comparable to The Apocalypse a/Esdras and The Shepherd of Hermas; in addition, the poet often speaks as a religious prophet, not unlike Hildegard or Bridget. Second, while Piers does belong within a tradition of anti-mendicant apocalypticism, Lan­ gland wasnot rabidly hostile to friars but sympathized with their ideals and sought a legitimate place for them in his prophetic future. Third, the poet was above all a religious reformist, particularly resembling Hildegard, who foresaw a future characterized by apostolic perfection and "repristina­ tion"-the "return [of] erring clergy to a pristine state of purity." Fourth, the poet's thought resembled that of followers ofJoachim of Fiore insofar as both he and they expected a reforming hero and the transformation of the Church after the demise of Antichrist. The fluency of Kerby-Fulton's presentation is impeded by traits appar­ ently left over from a doctoral dissertation stage. There are too many long quotations from secondary sources and too many long passages of untrans­ lated Latin (the latter practice is particularly inappropriate in view of Kerby-Fulton's desire to win over an audience of Anglicists). The organiza­ tional strategy of weaving continuously from Latin apocalypticists to Lang­ land's poem, rather than presenting the apocalyptic tradition whole and then reading Piers in light of it, has strengths, yet sometimes it results in wearying repetitiveness (when the author warns, "We will return again and again to the ad pristinum statum prophecy," she means it). All told, however, these deficiencies are outweighed by Kerby-Fulton's clarity of definition, firmness of argumentation, and vigorous prose-a prose un­ sullied by semiotic jargon and the rebarbative MLA...