| Abstrakt: |
While Gavin Douglas is better known for his open invocations of Chaucer, this essay argues that he includes veiled references to Langland in his EneadosPrologue 8, an alliterative dream vision. A series of verbal and thematic echoes of Piers Plowmanallows Douglas to confront his narrator persona with a Langlandian mode of poetic making and to subject him to Langlandian questions about the worth and social function of poetry. This encounter is implicated in Douglas’s ongoing discussion of his poetic project, raising the spectre of unruly readers beyond his control even as it provides a model for negotiating traditional literary hierarchies. |
