Some late medieval texts are less tolerant of anger’s moral ambiguity than others. The early fifteenth-century Wycliffite polemic The Lanterne of Liȝt, for example, zealously asserts that “as iust wraþþe is no wraþþe, but a feruent diligence, so riȝtwise smyting is no smyting, but a just amending” (XII.9–11; fol. 93r). Curiously, the Lanterne introduces the notion of right- eous anger only to erase and rename it. Where the Parson and his ilk reconcile the moral am- biguity of “ire” by bifurcating the affect along moral lines—“ire is in two maneres; that oon of hem is good, and that oother is wikked”—the Lanterne-author presents righteous anger as conceptually implosive. There is an implicitly performative quality to the seemingly consta- tive statement “iust wraþþe is no wraþþe”: the very act of its utterance (if felicitous) effec- tively evacuates the signifier “wraþþe” of any potential justice.31 Those feelings that would be called “wraþþe” if not for their justness are semantically displaced onto the phrase “fer- vent diligence.” Supplementing this performative de-sacralization of “wraþþe” is a parallel treatment of violence. Accordingly, righteous anger becomes juridical diligence and just vio- lence becomes valid retribution.
Why does the Lantern-author indulge in this paradoxical phrasing? Why not simply state that righteous “wraþþe” and “smyting” are also known as “fervent diligence” and “iust amending” respectively? Perhaps this self-destructive conceptualization of righteous anger betrays an authorial desire to render the signifiers “wraþþe” and “smyting” exclusively pejo- rative, in order to sidestep, in “vernacular theology” (Gillespie 401–20),the moral ambiguity
already firmly entrenched in the Latin ira.After all, as Kantik Ghosh convincingly argues, Wycliffites tended to be easily as wary of semantic instability as their ecclesiastical oppo- nents, despite (or perhaps because of) their zeal for translating scripture into the vernacular (22–66). Unlike the Wycliffite sermon above—which registers, but also restricts, the plurali- ty of meaning present in the statement “þe sunne fill not on his [Christ’s] wraþþe”—the Lan-
terne is completely unwilling to tolerate moral ambiguity in the signifier “wraþþe.” Seman-
tics, above all, are at stake in the Lanterne’s performative disavowal of “iust wraþþe.” No matter how radical its wording, the Lanterne’s conception of righteous indigna- tion is not simply a progressive answer to the Parson’s “conservative” orthodoxy. Just as the Parson subordinates affect to morality—allowing the former to determine the latter, but not
vice versa—the Lanterne’s de-moralization of “wraþþe” and “smyting” presupposes the su-
premacy of an a priori moral law. Although it clearly attempts to perpetuate anti-institutional sentiment, the Lanterne’s “call to arms” is haunted by the specter of sin: the fact that “iust wraþþe is no wraþþe” does nothing to alleviate anxieties about anger’s association with sin. The Lanterne’s audience is therefore no freer to embrace anger as an autonomous mode of judgment than that of the Parson. Implicit within both texts is the mandate that irascimini must always be tempered by nolite peccare. The deadliness of the sin wrath, it seems, stands between a zeal for righteous anger and a wholehearted endorsement of the affect’s juridical potential.
Yet it is not difficult to imagine a theology of anger devoid of ideological constraint:
irascimini without nolite peccare. Since anger’s moral fallibility forces the subject to “se-
cond-guess” its judgments, such a theology would have to eschew the notion of sinful anger. This brings us to the A-text of Langland’s The Vision of Piers Plowman, which notably
elides the Deadly Sin wrath. All three major versions of Langland’s poem—the A-, B- and C-texts—contain a discrete episode commonly referred to as the Confession of the Seven Deadly Sins.32 An artistic tour de force, it depicts personified Deadly Sins as they confess publically to their newfound priest Repentance. However, in the A-text—long thought to be an early draft of the poem, composed sometime in the mid 1370’s (Piers Plowman: The A-
text 6–8)—we only meet six Deadly Sins: Pride, Lust, Envy, Covetousness, Gluttony, and
Sloth. Wrath is conspicuously absent.33
Of course, Wrath’s absence alone hardly suggests that Langland’s exclusion of anger constitutes an intentional elision, or even an unconscious repression. After all, he might simply have forgotten to personify Wrath in this early draft of the poem. Alternatively, he may have waylaid his treatment thereof because he did not yet feel up to that particular artis- tic task. These possibilities, however, are unlikely for two reasons. First, although the A- text’s Confession Scene never personifies wrath, the signifier “wraþþe” and its cognates ap- pear multiple times therein. Curiously, each mention of wrath occurs in direct relation to En- vy. Envy, for instance, describes the manner in which he sabotages his neighbor’s reputation by exclaiming: “Betwyn hym & his meyne I haue mad wraþþe” (A.V.79). Later, he says “whoso haþ more þanne I, þat angriþ myn herte” (A.V.97). Even Envy’s physical appearance is affected by wrath: “His body was bolnid for wraþþe þat he bot his lippes, / And wroþliche he wroþ his fest, to wreke hym he þouȝte” (A.V.66–67). It is improbable that the existence of the Deadly Sin wrath slipped the same mind that so emphatically pointed out envy’s capacity to engender anger. Further, when Langland does portray Wrath in the B- and C-texts, his
32 The Confession Scene takes place in Passus V of the A- and B-texts and Passus VI of the
C-text.
character vignette appears directly after that of Envy, thus maintaining the A-text’s sense that sinful anger issues from a matrix of jealousy (B.V.135–87; C.VI.103–70). There is a consid- erable difference, however, between characterizing wrath as a Deadly Sin that tends to result from envy, and demoting the former to a mere noxious byproduct of the latter.
Secondly, Passus II of the A-text also contains a catalogue of six Deadly Sins that ex- cludes wrath:
Wyten & wynessen þat wonen vpon erþe, Þat I, Fauel, feffe Falsnesse to Mede,
To be present in Pride for pouere or for riche, Wiþ þe Erldom of Enuye for euere to laste,
Wiþ alle þe lordsshipe of Leccherie in lengþe & in brede; Wiþ þe Kingdom of Coueitise I croune hem togidre; And al þe Ile of Vsurie, & Auarice þe faste,
Glotonye & grete oþes I gyue hem togidere;
Wiþ alle þe delites of lust þe deuil for to serue, In al þe Signiure of Slouþe I sese hem togidere; Þei to haue & to holde & here eires aftir
Wiþ alle þe purtenaunce of purcatorie into þe pyne of helle. (A.II.57–68, emphasis mine)
Thus Favel weds Falseness to Lady Mede. Although the character in whose mouth this speech is placed is by no means reputable—the semantic valance of the noun “favel” in- cludes lying, deceit and insincerity (“favel”)—it remains quite telling that his otherwise- standard cartography of sin should exclude wrath altogether. Both the B- and C-texts sup-
plement the fourth line of the passage above, elongating “þe Erldom of enuye” to “þe Erl- dome of Envye and Yre togideres” (B.II.84; C.II.91). Furthermore, immediately after the A- text’s Favel completes his unholy marriage ceremony, Theology angrily alludes to St. Truth’s anger: “Þanne tenide hym Theologie what he þis tale herde, / And seide to Cyuyle, ‘now sorewe on þi bokes, / Such weddyng to werche to wraþþe wiþ Treuþe’” (A.II.79–81). Once again, Langland seems to go out of his way to remind us that he is conscious of wrath’s ex- istence, but does not consider it a Deadly Sin.
Perhaps the A-text’s elisions of wrath are meant to facilitate an ulterior condemnation of acedia (sloth). John Bowers has convincingly argued that Piers Plowman evinces a dis- tinct preoccupation with sloth by consistently depicting it as the last in its catalogues of Deadly Sins (61–96). If Langland was particularly worried about the prevalence of sloth in his community, he might have come to suspect the populace of passing laziness off as pa- tience, which, as we have seen, was often defined as the righteous eschewal of wrath. By twice passing the sin over in silence, the A-text implicitly critiques the absence of righteous anger in its portrait of a slothful, contemporary Christendom. In other words, it downplays wrath’s sinfulness in order to reduce its audience’s self-conscious reservations about impas- sioned, social action. Indeed, this rhetorical strategy makes sense in the context of Lang- land’s larger theological project, which, if not “semi-Pelagian” (Adams 367–71), is certainly in favor of good works: “chastite wiþoute charite worþ cheyned in helle” is his narrator’s harsh vernacularization of “fides sine operibus mortua est” (A.I.162; “faith is dead without works”).
On the other hand, Langland was not willing—or, perhaps, able—to completely cleanse anger of sinfulness. By depicting an irascible Envy, the poet implies that angry be-
havior is at least closely related to sin. If he intentionally elides a portrayal of Wrath in order to incite social action in his audience, Langland also implicitly cautions his readers not to mistake their frustration with worldly poverty for righteous anger. In fact, the A-text does personify wrath, though not in the Confession Scene. Shortly thereafter, towards the end of Passus VI, the crowd to which the narrator belongs—presumably comprised of the aforemen- tioned six sins, though no more is heard from them—is first introduced to the eponymous Plowman, who gives them elaborate directions to the abode of St. Truth (who represents God-the-Father, salvation and moral rectitude, to name a few).
In and of themselves, these directions allegorize the Christian’s journey through life, giving a schematic account of the mental states and ideals one ought to either pursue or avoid in the quest for salvation. At the climax of this sub-allegory, the subject presupposed by Piers’ directions finally discovers the ever-elusive St. Truth, embedded in her own heart: “And ȝif grace graunte þe to gon in on þis wise, / Þou shalt se treuþe wel sitte in þin herte / And lere þe for to loue & his lawes holden” (A.VI.92–94). The act of inwardly “seeing” this kernel of divinity renders one able to learn and uphold celestial law. By allegorizing the Au- gustinian dictum that knowledge of divinity begins with introspection, Langland celebrates the divine “moral sentiment” innate within the human soul (Raw 153–54).
This introspective epiphany, however, does not mark the end of the Plowman’s direc- tions. Immediately after enjoining his audience to follow the laws of Truth, which are also the laws of the heart, Piers warns them to “be war þanne of Wraþþe, þat wykkide shrewe / For he haþ enuye to Hym þat in þin herte sitteþ” (A.VI.95–96). In this unsettling reversal, the A-text for the first time explicitly personifies anger. The poem’s audience can no longer write wrath off as a mere characteristic of Envy; in Passus VI, envy becomes an attribute of
Wrath. Piers’ warning implies that wrath has the capacity to disrupt the subject’s internal communion with Truth. Otherwise, why would his audience need to “be war”? In this vein, the Plowman goes on to delineate the manner in which anger can initiate a devastating fall from grace:
[Wraþþe] pokiþ forþ pride to preise þiselue. Þe boldnesse of þi biefait makiþ þe blynd þanne, And so worst þou dryuen out as dew & þe dore closid, Ikeiȝid & ycliket to kepe þe þeroute
Happily an hundrit wynter er þou eft entre. (A.VI.97–101)
The intrusion of Wrath into Piers’ allegory is likened to the onset of a spiritual blindness that tragically obscures the subject’s “moral compass.” Piers’ precautionary allegation against wrath echoes Gregory the Great’s warning that “per iram, inquit, lux veritatis amittitur, quia cum iracundia confusionis tenebras menti incutit, huic Deus radium sue cognicionis ab- scondit” (qtd. in Fasciculus morum II.ii.11–13; “through wrath the light of truth is lost, for when anger injects the darkness of confusion into the mind, God withholds from it the ray of his knowledge,” 119). For both Gregory and Piers, anger is not simply a fallible mode of moral judgment, but a threat to the subject’s God-given contemplative faculties.
According to Joseph S. Wittig’s Concordance, Kane’s A-text contains about twenty- three words for anger ("angre," "wraþþe,” “tene,” “yre” and their respective cognates).34 Of these, four refer to celestial anger—that of St. Truth, Do-Wel, or, in one case, an angel—ten refer to anger felt by a character within the narrative (of these, four are directed at Lady Mede and two are instances of Piers Plowman’s “pure tene”), five refer to the personified
34 None of these “anger words” has a stable “moral hue.” Each can be used to describe
Envy, three are used in general injunctions to eschew wrath and one appears in an account of how it arises from willful behavior (Wisdom tells Wrong “Whoso werchiþ be wil wraþþe makiþ ofte” A.IV.56).35 Although Langland’s theology of anger is substantially complicated by the B- and C-texts, this “mixed bag” of usages clearly registers a profound ambivalence towards anger, already apparent in the A-text. After all, Langland may have omitted Wrath in the Confession Scene in an effort to render his violent incursion in Passus VI all the more shocking. Whatever his intentions, no complete version of Piers Plowman unequivocally en- dorses the notion that anger cannot sin, although certain passages, taken out of context, ap- pear to do just that. Just as the Parson’s contention that righteous anger is “bet than pley” is ironized by the recurrent laudations of “pley” throughout The Canterbury Tales (Fradenburg,
Sacrifice Your Love 35), Wrath’s unexpected absence in Passus V is counter-balanced by his
unexpected presence in Passus VI. Like most medieval Christian ideologues, Langland seems to have been, from the start, “on the fence” about anger.