William Langland (1332-1386)

William Langland is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem translated the language and concepts of the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by a layman.

The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman

• Piers Plowman (written c. 1370–90) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William’s Vision of Piers Plowman) is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections called passus (Latin for “step”). Page from the 14th-century Luttrell Psalter, showing drolleries on the right margin and a ploughman at the bottom
• The poem, consists of 11 visions.
• Like the Pearl Poet’s Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest works of English literature of the Middle Ages, even preceding and influencing Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Piers Plowman contains the first known reference to a literary tradition of Robin Hood tales.
• There exist three distinct versions of the poem, which scholars refer to as the A-, B-, and C-texts. A text is the shortest being of 2500 lines. The B-text is the most widely edited and translated version; it revises and extends the A-text by over four thousand lines.
• The poem, a mix of theological allegory and social satire, concerns the narrator/dreamer’s quest for the true Christian life in the context of medieval Catholicism. This journey takes place within a series of dream-visions; the dreamer seeks, among other things, the allegorical characters Dowel (“Do-Well”), Dobet (“Do-Better”), and Dobest (“Do-Best”). The poem is divided into passus (‘steps’), the divisions between which vary by version.

The Treatise on Astrolae