Abstract
How are we to understand an invention that neither copies its source texts in a servile manner, nor competes to displace them? Piers Plowman defies the categories of primary and secondary translation. Instead, Langland adopts non-competitive habits of invention from the theory and practice of tropological exegesis in order to embody ethical and literary sources in the invention of ‘heretofore unseen phenomena’. In the Pentecost episode, Will joins ‘many hundret’ in inventing the ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’, a hymn given to them by the Holy Spirit. The nascent church invents something completely new even as it conforms as closely as possible to its source, the Holy Spirit.
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