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The Function Of Duality And Trinity In The Structure Of Piers Plowman, Mary-Jo Arn

Graduate Dissertations and Theses

Dualities and trinities are everywhere in the poem, sometimes conflicting, sometimes not. They govern the poem in its largest structures, overarching the entire poem, and its smallest, often evoking an additional level of meaning in just a phrase. These groupings of two and three are not ornamental or arbitrary, but thematic; the meanings of the poem are inextricably bound up in them. It will be necessary,therefore, in what follows, to discuss meaning (theme) as much as structure. The meaning of Dobest, for instance, is dependent upon its being the third part of a trinity. The other two parts must in …