Haukyn and the Perils of Self Knowledge: Narratorial Self Criticism in Piers Plowman

Assessments of the satire in Piers Plowman often attend either to that poem’s social criticism or to its treatment of Christian strictures against judging others. Narratorial self criticism, on the other hand—how the poet implicates himself in the problems his work identifies—has been studied less thoroughly so far. While a general consensus holds that Langland borrowed from the conventions of goliardic poetry to depict his narrator (Will) as a bumbling jongleur or shifty gyrovague, the B-version’s somewhat goliardic character of Haukyn (arguably a parallel for Will) complicates this picture. Haukyn’s dangerous self excoriation, along with Will and other characters’ reactions to it, suggests the poem’s more sustained reflection on the proper limits of self criticism and of satire both.

This paper claims that medieval religious discourse concerning how one might best conceive of—or know—oneself informs Piers Plowman’s consideration of Haukyn. The Stoic imperative to “know oneself,” transformed by medieval monasticism into the goal of contemptus sui or “contempt of self,” was contrasted with the vice of “wanhope” (a.k.a. desperatio) to which Haukyn nearly falls prey. Beyond helping to account for Langland’s sense of when self criticism goes too far, recognizing the tension faced by Haukyn between contemptus sui and despair contributes to our understanding of Langlandian character.  It also helps to evince the work’s interest in originally monastic thought, given that “contempt of self” was far less well attested in later medieval spiritual writings than the outwardly focused ideal of contemptus mundi (“contempt of the world”).