Fragmentation and Contradiction in Piers Plowman and Its Implications for the Study of Modern Literature, Art and Culture the Apocalyptic Discourse

This study charts and analyzes the stylistic, ideological, and human signifiers of a general crisis of rhetoric and discourse: shifting genres and resolutions; parataxis; contradiction, recycling, repetition. The style, structure and dialogic pattern of meanings of William Langland's Piers Plowman are the starting points of an inquiry into the contradictions of cultures and societies in transition. Crises of feudal and late capitalist cultures in transition are analyzed in visual art, film, and music as well as literature. Texts studies include the work of Eliot, Pound, Lawrence, Dos Passos, Glass, Reich, and Dylan, as well as the film "Beyond Thunderdome."