Abstract
Passus V of the B-text of Langland’s Piers Plowman and the representation of Haukyn the Active Man with his sin-soiled coat reveal the transformative function of the process of memory within literary representations of confession, positive and negative types of forgetfulness, and the reinvention of identity through remembering the past. Langland presents allegorized personifications of the Deadly Sins who narrate their misdeeds to Repentance and seek to mitigate the wickedness of their pasts—or, in some cases, to boast of their sinfulness—through confession. Depictions of memory in the Sins’ confessions and the subsequent confession of Haukyn reveal, first, contrasting representations, ideal and flawed, of the memorial process within confession and, second, how recollection, or a lack thereof, can lead towards spiritual salvation or corruption.
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Tracy, K.G. (2017). Langland: Piers Plowman, Recollection, Confession, and the Penitent. In: Memory and Confession in Middle English Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-55675-8_3
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