Accursed Envy: An Introduction into the Reimagining of the Sin Envy from Piers Plowman the A Version: Passus 5, lines 60-96

Abstract

For my translation of Passus 5, lines 60-96, in which Will witnessed humanity’s purification of sin through the allegorized confessions of the Seven Deadly Sins, my interest in the supernatural and the occult influenced a reimagining of the sin of Envy as a variant of the Wendigo from Native American folklore and the Blood-Starved Beast from FromSoftware’s video game Bloodborne. Three years ago, I was introduced to Dr. Michael Calabrese’s translation of William Langland’s Piers Plowman: the A Text, an intelligible, insightful, and inspirational literary work that is equal parts educational, comedic, and uniquely soothing to the trinity of the mind, soul, and heart of any medieval scholar. While the text conjured feelings of hope, grace, and love, I found myself drawn to the darker aspects of Langland’s fable: the depictions of negative allegorical personifications that work to infect the human psyche, the descriptions of the denizens of the Pit bent on the destruction of the soul, and the characterizations of the Seven Deadly Sins as a force driven by nature to corrupt humanity in its entirety.