Character names in Piers Plowman
The author makes a decision throughout Piers Plowman to include many ideas as physical characters in the story. We see this personification exemplified in characters such as Conscience, Repentance, and Will. Although it is tricky to understand who exactly is talking and to whom, it is still a unique plot device that allows the author to attribute actions in the story to different values, without actually saying things like “he did it under good conscience”. Using this, we can deduce more about what is being said because we automatically know from which emotion or feeling it is coming from.
However, I think this decision shoehorns the author into only being able to write certain lines of dialogue for these characters. For instance, naming a character “Honesty” would be tricky because that character would not be able to tell a lie, even if it were necessary in the story. Although Piers Plowman is not really a story in the traditional sense, this could still be a problem. Are there instances where a character in Piers Plowman says something out of character? The implications of this would be immeasurable, because then none of the character names could be trusted. It is certainly a clever way to get the reader to formulate an opinion about the characters, but to me it feels like it would be tricky to have that character always maintain that would be challenging.
Having dabbled in creative writing and watched too many video game analyses, I agree that breaking the laws or expectations set for your characters and world completely breaks the immersion that authors and writers strive to build. I understood the characters' roles in the monstrously long allegory that is Piers Plowman, but I had never thought of it this way before! (Quote in question below.)
ReplyDelete"For instance, naming a character 'Honesty' would be tricky because that character would not be able to tell a lie, even if it were necessary in the story."
The characteristics of the characters could be limiting, but I think that's what could make them interesting. The personification brings these concepts to life, and, although it could be challenging for the author, keeping them in character is what would really make for a lasting impression of the topics.
ReplyDeleteIt might help to think of these characters as concepts with characteristics of humans rather than humans with characteristics of the concepts. They often seem to appear as a faculty of a different character's mind, such as Hunger coming to "advise" Plowman. I think depicting each concept as a character allows the same idea to affect everyone collectively, while their human qualities show that they manifest on the level of individuals.
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