Love and knowledge feed each other in the discourse of erotic love where it overlaps with naturalistic thought just as they do where the discourse overlaps with metaphysical verities. Langland's interest in visual motifs illustrates the bridge between spiritual love and earthly love. It aiso unites his concern about the proper form of spiritual knowledge and his clear celebration of naturalistic knowledge. In Passus XI, Will has a dream-within-a-dream that helps to emphasize the role of sight, even though it must be said that Langland generally pays scant attention to making his dream-poem visual. At the end of this dream-within-a-dream, Will meets Ymaginatif; this inner dream therefore initiates a sustained treatment of sight and psychological processes. Where Langland highlights sight, he usually draws attention to the relationship between love and knowledge. He does so here and he does the same again in Passus XV. The vision of middleearth provides the foundation for a two-fold consideration of the relationship between love, earthly knowledge, and sight, the first negative and the second positive.

The first look at the earth in this inner vision, when Fortune seizes Will and has him look into the mirror which is middle-earth, is negative. Fortune is accompanied by two damsels, Concupiscencia Carnis and Coveitise of Eighes. Both of these characters are associated in the Middle Ages with vitium curiositatis, an unspiritual desire to acquire learning.