"B" Version (Piers Plowman)

Author: William Langland (or Langley) about AD 1377 1st Edition 1869 This Book 10th Edition 1923, reprinted 1962. Edited: Rev Walter W. Skeat Litt.D, DCL, LL.D, PhD Publisher: University Press Oxford The English poet, William Langland (c.1332-c.1400), was probably born at Ledbury in Herefordshire. He became a clerk but having married early, could not take more than minor orders, and possibly earned a poor living by singing in a chantry and by copying legal documents. He lived many years in London in poverty. His famous Vision Concerning Piers Plowman exhibits a moral earnestness and energy which is brightened by his vivid glimpses of the lives of the poorest classes of 14th century England. Piers Plowman is an allegorical moral and social satire, written as a "vision" of the common medieval type. The poet falls asleep in the Malvern Hills and dreams that in a wilderness he comes upon the tower of Truth (God) set on a hill, with the dungeon of Wrong (the Devil) in the deep valley below, and a "fair field full of folk" (the world of living men) between them. He describes satirically all the different classes of people he sees there; then a lady named Holy Church rebukes him for sleeping and explains the meaning of all he sees. Further characters (Conscience, Liar, Reason and so on) enter the action; Conscience finally persuades many of the people to turn away from the Seven Deadly Sins and go in search of St. Truth, but they need a guide. Piers (Peter), a simple Plowman, appears and says that because of his common sense and clean conscience he knows the way and will show them if they help him plow his half acre. Some of the company help, but some shirk; and Piers becomes identified with Christ. Piers is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during the Middle Ages.