Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is the title of a
Middle EnglishMiddle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
allegorical narrative poem by
William LanglandWilliam Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.- Life :The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin...
. It is written in unrhymed
alliterative verseIn prosody, alliterative verse is a form of verse that uses alliteration as the principal structuring device to unify lines of poetry, as opposed to other devices such as rhyme. The most commonly studied traditions of alliterative verse are those found in the oldest literature of many Germanic...
divided into sections called "passus" (
LatinLatin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
for "step"). Piers is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of
English literatureEnglish literature is the literature written in the English language, including literature composed in English by writers not necessarily from England; for example, Robert Burns was Scottish, James Joyce was Irish, Joseph Conrad was Polish, Dylan Thomas was Welsh, Edgar Allan Poe was American, J....
along with
Chaucer'sGeoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
Canterbury Tales and
Sir Gawain and the Green KnightSir Gawain and the Green Knight is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance outlining an adventure of Sir Gawain, a knight of King Arthur's Round Table. In the poem, Sir Gawain accepts a challenge from a mysterious warrior who is completely green, from his clothes and hair to his...
during the Middle Ages.
Synopsis
The poem—part theological allegory, part social satire—concerns the narrator's intense quest for the true
ChristianA Christian is a person who adheres to Christianity, an Abrahamic, monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as recorded in the Canonical gospels and the letters of the New Testament...
life, from the perspective of mediæval
CatholicismCatholicism is a broad term for the body of the Catholic faith, its theologies and doctrines, its liturgical, ethical, spiritual, and behavioral characteristics, as well as a religious people as a whole....
. This quest entails a series of dream-visions and an examination into the lives of three
allegoricalAllegory is a demonstrative form of representation explaining meaning other than the words that are spoken. Allegory communicates its message by means of symbolic figures, actions or symbolic representation...
characters, Dowel ("Do-Well"), Dobet ("Do-Better"), and Dobest ("Do-Best").
The poem begins in the
Malvern HillsThe Malvern Hills are a range of hills in the English counties of Worcestershire, Herefordshire and a small area of northern Gloucestershire, dominating the surrounding countryside and the towns and villages of the district of Malvern...
in
Malvern, WorcestershireMalvern is a town and civil parish in Worcestershire, England, governed by Malvern Town Council. As of the 2001 census it has a population of 28,749, and includes the historical settlement and commercial centre of Great Malvern on the steep eastern flank of the Malvern Hills, and the former...
. A man named Will falls asleep and has a vision of a tower set upon a hill and a fortress (donjon) in a deep valley; between these symbols of heaven and hell is a "fair field full of folk", representing the world of mankind. In the early part of the poem Piers, the humble plowman of the title, appears and offers himself as the narrator's guide to Truth. The latter part of the work, however, is concerned with the narrator's search for Dowel, Dobet and Dobest.
Title and authorship
It is now commonly accepted that Piers Plowman was written by
William LanglandWilliam Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.- Life :The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin...
, about whom little is known. This attribution of the poem to Langland rests principally on the
evidenceEvidence in its broadest sense includes everything that is used to determine or demonstrate the truth of an assertion. Giving or procuring evidence is the process of using those things that are either presumed to be true, or were themselves proven via evidence, to demonstrate an assertion's truth...
of an early-fifteenth-century manuscript of the C-text (see below) of Piers held at
Trinity College, DublinTrinity College, Dublin , formally known as the College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth near Dublin, was founded in 1592 by letters patent from Queen Elizabeth I as the "mother of a university", Extracts from Letters Patent of Elizabeth I, 1592: "...we...found and...
(MS 212), which ascribes the work to one man called, 'Willielmus de Langlond':
Memorandum quod Stacy de Rokayle pater willielmi de Langlond qui stacius fuit generosus & morabatur in Schiptoun vnder whicwode tenens domini le Spenser in comitatu Oxoniensi qui predictus willielmus fecit librum qui vocatur Perys ploughman.
(It should be noted that Stacy de Rokayle was the father of William de Langlond; this Stacy was of noble birth and dwelt in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire. The aforesaid William made the book which is called Piers Plowman.)
Other manuscripts also name the author as "Robert or William langland", or "Wilhelmus W." (which could be shorthand for "William of Wychwood").
The attribution to William Langland is also based on internal evidence, primarily a seemingly autobiographical section in Passus 5 of the C-text of the poem. The main
narratorA narrator is, within any story , the fictional or non-fictional, personal or impersonal entity who tells the story to the audience. When the narrator is also a character within the story, he or she is sometimes known as the viewpoint character. The narrator is one of three entities responsible for...
of the poem in all the versions is named Will, with allegorical resonances clearly intended, and Langland (or Longland) is thought to be indicated as a surname through apparent
punThe pun, also called paronomasia, is a form of word play which suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect. These ambiguities can arise from the intentional use and abuse of homophonic,...
s; e.g., at one point the narrator remarks: "I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille" (B.XV.152). This could be a coded reference to the poet's name, in the style of much late-mediæval literature. Langland's authorship, however, is not entirely beyond dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson has demonstrated.
In the sixteenth century, when Piers was first printed, authorship was attributed by various
antiquarianAn antiquarian or antiquary is an aficionado or student of antiquities or things of the past. More specifically, the term is used for those who study history with particular attention to ancient objects of art or science, archaeological and historic sites, or historic archives and manuscripts...
s (such as
John BaleJohn Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...
) and poets to
John WycliffeJohn Wycliffe was an English Scholastic philosopher, theologian, lay preacher, translator, reformer and university teacher who was known as an early dissident in the Roman Catholic Church during the 14th century. His followers were known as Lollards, a somewhat rebellious movement, which preached...
and
Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, amongst others. Some sixteenth and seventeenth-century persons regarded the poem as anonymous, and/or associated it with texts in the plowman tradition of social complaint, particularly the Chaucerian pseudepigrapha, The Ploughman's Tale and
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede"Pierce the Ploughman's Crede" is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, savagely lampooning the four orders of friars.-Textual History:Surviving in two complete forteenth-century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the Crede can be dated on internal evidence to the short period between...
. (The latter was appended to Owen Rogers' 1560 edition of Piers Plowman, a degraded version of
Robert CrowleyRobert Crowley also Robertus Croleus, Roberto Croleo, Robart Crowleye, Robarte Crole, and Crule , was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman who was among the Marian exiles at Frankfurt...
's 1550 editions.) The character of Piers himself had come to be considered by many readers to be in some sense the author.
The first printed editions by Crowley named the author as "Robert Langland" in a prefatory note. Langland is described as a probable protégé of Wycliffe. With Crowley's editions, the poem followed an existing and subsequently repeated convention of titling the poem The Vision of Piers [or Pierce] Plowman, which is in fact the conventional name of just one section of the poem.
Some medievalists and text critics, beginning with John Matthews Manly, have posited multiple authorship theories for Piers, an idea which continues to have a periodic resurgence in the scholarly literature. One scholar now disputes the single-author hypothesis, supposing that the poem may be the work of 2–5 authors, depending upon how authorship is defined. In keeping with contemporary scholarly trends in
textual criticismTextual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...
,
critical theoryCritical theory is an examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two different meanings with different origins and histories: one originating in sociology and the other in literary criticism...
, and the
history of the bookThe history of books follows a suite of technological innovations for books. These improved the quality of text conservation, the access to information, portability, and the cost of production...
,
Charlotte BrewerCharlotte Brewer is professor of English language and literature at Hertford College, Oxford. Before joining Hertford in 1990, she was a thesis fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She has also taught at the University of Leeds and Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford...
, among others, suggests that
scribesScribes is a minimalist and extensible text editor for GNOME that combines simplicity with power. Scribes focuses on ways workflow and productivity can be intelligently automated and radically improved...
and their supervisors be regarded as editors with semi-authorial roles in the production of Piers Plowman and other early modern texts; but this has nothing to do with Manly's argument.
The text
Piers Plowman is considered to be one of the most analytically challenging texts in
Middle EnglishMiddle English is the stage in the history of the English language during the High and Late Middle Ages, or roughly during the four centuries between the late 11th and the late 15th century....
textual criticismTextual criticism is a branch of literary criticism that is concerned with the identification and removal of transcription errors in the texts of manuscripts...
. There are 50–56 surviving manuscripts, some of which are fragmentary. None of the texts is known to be in the author's own hand, and none of them derive directly from any of the others.
All modern discussion of the text revolves around the classifications of
W. W. SkeatWalter William Skeat , English philologist, was born in London on the 21st of November 1835, and educated at King's College School , Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July 1860. His grandsons include the noted palaeographer T. C...
. Skeat argued that there are as many as ten forms of the poem, but only three are to be considered authoritative—the A, B, and C-texts—although the definition of "authoritative" in this context is problematic. According to the three-version hypothesis, each version represents different manuscript traditions deriving from three distinct and successive stages of authorial revision. Although precise dating is debated, the A, B, and C texts are now commonly thought of as the progressive (20–25 years) work of a single author.
According to the three versions hypothesis, the A-text was written ca. 1367–70 and is the earliest. It breaks off, apparently unfinished, at Book 11 and Book 12 is written by another author or interpolator. The poem runs to about 2,500 lines. The B-text (Warner's ur-B text) was written ca. 1377–79; it revises A, adds new material, and is three times the length of A. It runs to about 7,300 lines. The C-text was written in the 1380s as a major revision of B except for the final sections. There is some debate over whether the poem can be regarded as finished or not. It entails additions, omissions, and transpositions; it is not significantly different in size from B. Some scholars see it as a conservative revision of B that aims at disassociating the poem from
LollardyLollardy was a political and religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century to the English Reformation. The term "Lollard" refers to the followers of John Wycliffe, a prominent theologian who was dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for criticism of the Church, especially his...
and the religious and political radicalism of
John BallJohn Ball was an English Lollard priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. In that year, Ball gave a sermon in which he asked the rhetorical question, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?".-Biography:Little is known of Ball's early years. He lived in...
during the
Great Rising of 1381The Peasants' Revolt, Wat Tyler's Rebellion, or the Great Rising of 1381 was one of a number of popular revolts in late medieval Europe and is a major event in the history of England. Tyler's Rebellion was not only the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history but also the...
. (Ball appropriated Piers and other characters in the poem for his own verses, speeches, and letters during the Rising.) There is little actual evidence for this proposal, and much against it.
SkeatWalter William Skeat , English philologist, was born in London on the 21st of November 1835, and educated at King's College School , Highgate School, and Christ's College, Cambridge, of which he became a fellow in July 1860. His grandsons include the noted palaeographer T. C...
believed that the A-text was incomplete and based his editions on a B-text manuscript (Oxford, MS. Laud Misc. 581) that he wrongly thought was probably a
holographA holograph is a document written entirely in the handwriting of the person whose signature it bears. Some countries or local jurisdictions within certain countries give legal standing to specific types of holographic documents, generally waiving requirements that they be witnessed...
. Modern editors following Skeat, such as George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, have maintained the basic tenets of Skeat's work: there were three final authorial texts, now lost, that can be reconstructed, albeit imperfectly and without certainty, by rooting out the "corruption" and "damage" done by scribes.
The Kane, Kane-Donaldson, and Russell-Kane editions of the three versions, published by the Athlone Press, have been controversial, but are considered among the most important accomplishments in modern editorial work and theory in Middle English. A. V. C. Schmidt has also published a parallel edition of A, B, C and Z; the promised second volume containing a full textual apparatus indicating his editorial decisions was finally published in 2008, long after the first volume fell out of print.
A. G. Rigg and Charlotte Brewer hypothesized the existence of a Z-text predecessor to A which contains elements of both A and C. The Z-text is based on Oxford MS. Bodley 851, which Rigg and Brewer edited and published. It is the shortest version, and its authenticity is disputed. Ralph Hanna III has disputed the Rigg/Brewer approach based on codicological evidence and internal literary evidence; consequently the Z-text is now more commonly viewed as a scribal corruption of A with C elements. More recently, Lawrence Warner has shown that what was thought of as B in fact incorporates matter produced as part of the C-revision: if B circulated before C, it looked nothing like what had been assumed .
There are some scholars who dispute the ABC chronology of the texts altogether, Jill Mann foremost amongst them. There is also a (minority) school of thought that two authors contributed to the three versions of the poem. Neither of these reappraisals of the textual tradition of the poem are generally seen as very robust.
14th–15th centuries
John BallJohn Ball was an English Lollard priest who took a prominent part in the Peasants' Revolt of 1381. In that year, Ball gave a sermon in which he asked the rhetorical question, "When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentleman?".-Biography:Little is known of Ball's early years. He lived in...
, a priest involved as a leader in the
Great Rising of 1381The Peasants' Revolt, Wat Tyler's Rebellion, or the Great Rising of 1381 was one of a number of popular revolts in late medieval Europe and is a major event in the history of England. Tyler's Rebellion was not only the most extreme and widespread insurrection in English history but also the...
(also known as the Peasants' Revolt), included Piers and other characters in his writings. If Piers Plowman already had perceived associations with
LollardyLollardy was a political and religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century to the English Reformation. The term "Lollard" refers to the followers of John Wycliffe, a prominent theologian who was dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for criticism of the Church, especially his...
, Ball's appropriations from it enhanced his and its association with the Lollards as well. The real beliefs and sympathies at work in Langland's poem and the revolt remain, for this reason, mysterious and debatable.
No doubt because of Ball's writings, the Dieulacres Abbey Chronicle account of the revolt refers to Piers, seemingly as a real person who was a leader with Ball in the revolt. Similarly, early in the history of the poem's dissemination in manuscript form, Piers is often treated as the author of the poem. Since it is hard to see how this is credible to those who read the poem, perhaps the idea was that Piers was a mask for the author. Or, as the ideal character of the poem, Piers might be seen as a kind of alter-ego for the poet that was more important to his early readers than the obviously authorial narrator and his apparent self-disclosures as Will. Ironically, Will's name and identity were substantially lost.
In some contemporary chronicles of the Rising, Ball and the Lollards were blamed for the revolt, and Piers began to be associated with
heresyHeresy is a controversial or novel change to a system of beliefs, especially a religion, that conflicts with established dogma. It is distinct from apostasy, which is the formal denunciation of one's religion, principles or cause, and blasphemy, which is irreverence toward religion...
and rebellion. The earliest literary works comprising the Piers Plowman tradition follow in the wake of these events, although they and their sixteenth-century successors are not anti-monarchical or supportive of rebellion. Like William Langland, who may have written the C-Text version of Piers Plowman to disassociate himself from the Rising, they look for the reform of the English church and society by the removal of abuses in what the authors' deem a restorative rather than an innovative project.
16th–18th centuries
The most conspicuous omissions from
William CaxtonWilliam Caxton was an English merchant, diplomat, writer and printer. As far as is known, he was the first English person to work as a printer and the first to introduce a printing press into England...
's press were the Bible and Piers Plowman. Both may have been avoided for political reasons—e.g., Wycliffite associations. It is possible that Piers may have been banned from print under prohibitions against histories, but this is uncertain; the language and metre might also have been obstacles. However, as in the case of Adrian Fortescue, as late as 1532, hand-copying of Piers manuscripts was still going on, and a staunch Roman Catholic like Fortescue could appreciate it as a critical, reformist but not a revolutionary, Protestant text.
Robert CrowleyRobert Crowley also Robertus Croleus, Roberto Croleo, Robart Crowleye, Robarte Crole, and Crule , was a stationer, poet, polemicist and Protestant clergyman who was among the Marian exiles at Frankfurt...
's 1550 editions of Piers Plowman present the poem as a social-gospelling Protestant's goad to the reformation of religion and society. The poem's publication probably did have resonance. Many texts evoke Piers and/or Ploughmen for reforming purposes: one of the Marprelate tracts claims Piers Plowman for its grandfather.
Many scholars, and the new ODNB, assert that Piers Plowman was a banned book, that it was published as "propaganda" for reformist interests backed by
Edward Seymour, 1st Duke of SomersetEdward Seymour, 1st Duke of Somerset, 1st Earl of Hertford, 1st Viscount Beauchamp of Hache, KG, Earl Marshal was Lord Protector of England in the period between the death of Henry VIII in 1547 and his own indictment in 1549....
or other high-placed aristocrats, and that Crowley added interpretive glosses and substantially altered the text of the poem for propaganda purposes. These inferences exceed the evidence, even if Piers Plowman was politically sensitive, as many books were in the Tudor period. The political nature of the poem—its mention of and association with popular rebellion—would obviously be unacceptable to the king, Somerset, and others, reform-minded though they were. In the passus summaries in the second and third editions, Crowley emphasizes material in the poem warning of political instability and widespread corruption when the king is a child (as was then the case); hardly state-sponsored propaganda. Other contemporary Edwardian and later Elizabethan publications by Crowley show that he was at this time concerned that the elite were using the Reformation to gain power and wealth, while the common people suffered economic and spiritual malnourishment.
Piers Plowman likely functioned for Crowley as a reformist text with polemic and prophetic qualities (although he denies the latter in his preface), but the text and apparatus do not overtly convey that impression. Some of Crowley's marginal glosses and his passus summaries are clearly polemical, but there are very few glosses (and no passus summaries) in the first edition. The assertion of propagandistic editorial intervention by Crowley exaggerates both his glosses, and the evidence that he deliberately deleted "Catholic" elements of Langland's poem—i.e., a few references to purgatory, transubstantiation, and some praise for monasticism. In the second and third editions, where the glosses were substantially increased, almost half are biblical citations.
Several scholarly sources claim that Crowley deleted 13 lines (N2r, B.10.291-303) praising monasticism. This idea first appears in an unpublished dissertation as a misreading of W. W. Skeat's parallel text edition of Piers Plowman. The error was repeated in John N. King's influential English Reformation Literature, p. 331. J. R. Thorne and Marie-Claire Uhart noted King's error by pointing out that the supposedly deleted passage does not appear in most extant manuscripts of the poem and was in all likelihood not in Crowley's source texts. ("Robert Crowley's Piers Plowman," Medium Aevum 55.2 (1986): 248-55.
Crowley may have made small attempts to remove or soften single references to
transubstantiationIn Roman Catholic theology, transubstantiation means the change, in the Eucharist, of the substance of wheat bread and grape wine into the substance of the Body and Blood, respectively, of Jesus, while all that is accessible to the senses remains as before.The Eastern Orthodox...
, the
Mass"Mass" is one of the names by which the sacrament of the Eucharist is called in the Roman Catholic Church: others are "Eucharist", the "Lord's Supper", the "Breaking of Bread", the "Eucharistic assembly ", the "memorial of the Lord's Passion and Resurrection", the "Holy Sacrifice", the "Holy and...
,
purgatoryPurgatory is the condition or process of purification or temporary punishment in which, it is believed, the souls of those who die in a state of grace are made ready for Heaven...
, and the Virgin Mary as a mediator and object of devotion. He also appears to have added a line against clerical pluralism--a vice he often attacked and may have eventually indulged in personally—as it appears in no extant manuscripts of Piers Plowman. However, in regard to purgatory, Crowley left almost a dozen other references to it in the poem. And in the case of Mary, Crowley left at least three significant references to her in the poem. He actually added a line to his second and third editions that clearly refers to Marian intercession (F1r). Thorne and Uhart note that in the manuscript tradition, "Christ" frequently replaces "Mary," so again Crowley may be following his source texts rather than deviating from them, though he certainly may have preferred sources that de-emphasized Mary. Several scholars (e.g., Johnston [2006], Scanlon [2007] and Warner [2007]) have recently argued against reading Crowley first and foremost as a Protestant polemic.
Crowley's first edition—aimed at the Latin-reading elite—was followed by subsequent editions. Crowley may have been financed by wealthy and highly-placed Protestants, perhaps even some who had the power to relax restrictions on the press at the end of
Edward VIEdward VI was the King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death. He was crowned on 20 February at the age of nine. The son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour, Edward was the third monarch of the Tudor dynasty and England's first monarch who was raised as a Protestant...
's reign. The first edition may have had little or only partial commercial success with a very small audience, and this would not necessarily preclude the production of further editions. Less than stellar sales and/or the limitations of a small market might have motivated the shift to a different audience in the later editions. It is probable that among the middle and lower classes it had some significance; this is supported by the contemporary proliferation of texts that responded to it; e.g.:
Thomas ChurchyardThomas Churchyard , English author, was born at Shrewsbury, the son of a farmer.-Life:Churchyard received a good education, and, having speedily dissipated at court the money with which his father provided him, he entered the household of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey...
's. The poem's obscure record may have had something to do with Crowley's radical politics, and the prophetic/apocalyptic aspects of his edition.
There is, at any rate, strong evidence that Crowley's editions did not have much of an impact on Latin-literate, elite audiences. After 1550, it was not printed again until 1813 except for Owen Rogers' 1561 edition—a cheap knock-off of Crowley's text that omits the preface naming the author while adding—in some cases—
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede"Pierce the Ploughman's Crede" is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, savagely lampooning the four orders of friars.-Textual History:Surviving in two complete forteenth-century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the Crede can be dated on internal evidence to the short period between...
. The few people who mention Piers Plowman before 1700 usually attribute it to someone other than Langland, and often it is unclear if they are referring to Langland's poem or one of the many other texts circulating in print as part of the
Piers Plowman traditionThe Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland's poem Piers Plowman...
, particularly The Ploughman's Tale. Since Piers was conflated with the author and dreamer-narrator of the poem at an early date, "Piers Plowman" or a Latin equivalent is often given as the name of the author, which indicates complete unfamiliarity with—or else silent incredulity toward—Crowley's preface.
Aside from
Raphael HolinshedRaphael Holinshed was an English chronicler, whose work, commonly known as Holinshed's Chronicles, was one of the major sources used by William Shakespeare for a number of his plays....
who merely quotes
John BaleJohn Bale was an English churchman, historian and controversialist, and Bishop of Ossory. He wrote the oldest known historical verse drama in English , and developed and published a very extensive list of the works of British authors down to his own time, just as the monastic libraries were being...
, the only sixteenth-century references to "Robert Langland" as the author of Piers Plowman come from Bale and Crowley in his preface to the various impressions. In 1580
John StowJohn Stow was an English historian and antiquarian.-Early life:The son of Thomas Stow, a tallow-chandler, he was born about 1525 in London, in the parish of St Michael, Cornhill. His father's whole rent for his house and garden was only 6s. 6d. a year, and Stow in his youth fetched milk every...
attributed Piers Plowman to "John Malvern," a name that surfaces again with John Pitts in 1619 and Anthony à Wood in 1674. Wood also supplied "Robertus de Langland" as a possible alternative, and
Henry PeachamHenry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.The elder Henry Peacham was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577....
attributed the poem to
John LydgateJohn Lydgate of Bury was a monk and poet, born in Lidgate, Suffolk, England.Lydgate is at once a greater and a lesser poet than John Gower. He is a greater poet because of his greater range and force; he has a much more powerful machine at his command. The sheer bulk of Lydgate's poetic output is...
in 1622. Except for Crowley and
Francis MeresFrancis Meres was an English churchman and author.He was born at Kirton in the Holland division of Lincolnshire in 1565. He was educated at Pembroke College, Cambridge, where he received a B.A. in 1587 and an M.A. in 1591. Two years later he was incorporated an M.A. of Oxford...
(who simply cribs Webbe)
William WebbeWilliam Webbe was an English critic and translator. Little is known about him except that he attended Trinity College, Cambridge, and was a tutor for distinguished families....
is the only person to comment on the alliterative Piers Plowman favorably, since he disliked verse with "the curiosity of Ryme." However, Webbe still disparaged the poem's harsh and obscure language. Several other writers regard the poem's matter approvingly, seeing it as anti-Catholic
satireSatire is primarily a literary genre or form, although in practice it can also be found in the graphic and performing arts. In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement...
and
polemicA polemic is a variety of arguments or controversies made against one opinion, doctrine, or person. Other variations of argument are debate and discussion...
.
The Ploughman's Tale was printed more and over a longer period of time than Piers Plowman; it was also printed as a Chaucerian text and included in many editions of Chaucer and mentioned as a familiar text in
Foxe's Book of MartyrsThe Book of Martyrs, by John Foxe, more accurately Acts and Monuments, is an account from a Protestant point of view of Christian church history and martyrology...
. Such associations gave it far more exposure—and positive exposure—than Piers Plowman. Yet in many cases it seems that readers read or heard of The Ploughman's Tale or another ploughman text and thought it was Piers Plowman. (E.g., John Leland,
William PrynneWilliam Prynne was an English lawyer, author, polemicist, and political figure. He was a prominent Puritan opponent of the church policy of the Archbishop of Canterbury, William Laud. Although his views on church polity were presbyterian, he became known in the 1640s as an Erastian, arguing for...
, possibly
John MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, and
John DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.Walter Scott called him "Glorious John." He was made Poet...
.) Given the diffusion of different Piers/Ploughman texts, it is usually not possible to be certain about what someone means to refer to when they mention "Piers Plowman" unless they provide specific identifying details—and most writers do not.
When Langland's poem is mentioned, it is often disparaged for its barbarous language. Similar charges were made against Chaucer, but he had more defenders and was already well established as a historical figure and "authority." Despite the work of Bale and Crowley, Langland's name appears to have remained unknown or unaccepted since other authors were suggested after Crowley's editions. Sometimes "Piers Plowman" was referred to as the author of the poem, and when writers refer to a list of medieval authors, they will often mention Piers Plowman as an author's name or a substitute for one. One gets the overall impression that Langland and Piers Plowman had less existence as author and text than did the fictional figure of Piers, whose relationship to a definite authorial and textual origin had been obscured much earlier.
Crowley's (or Rogers') edition may have reached
Edmund SpenserEdmund Spenser was an English poet best known for The Faerie Queene, an epic poem and fantastical allegory celebrating the Tudor dynasty and Elizabeth I. He is recognised as one of the premier craftsmen of Modern English verse in its infancy, and one of the greatest poets in the English...
,
Michael DraytonMichael Drayton was an English poet who came to prominence in the Elizabethan era.-Early life:He was born at Hartshill, near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, England. Almost nothing is known about his early life, beyond the fact that in 1580 he was in the service of Thomas Goodere of Collingham,...
,
John MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
, and
John BunyanJohn Bunyan was an English Christian writer and preacher, famous for writing The Pilgrim's Progress. Though he was a Reformed Baptist, in the Church of England he is remembered with a Lesser Festival on 30 August, and on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church on 29 August.-Life:In 1628,...
, but no records, citations, borrowed lines, or clear allusions to Piers Plowman exist in their writings. Spenser and Milton do directly refer to The Ploughman's Tale. Milton quotes two stanzas from it in Of Reformation, attributing it to Chaucer, and he makes another allusion in An Apology for a Pamphlet that could be to Piers Plowman but is more likely to The Ploughman's Tale. Spenser liberally borrows from The Ploughman's Tale in The Shepheardes Calendar, also attributing it to Chaucer. Raphael Holinshed briefly refers to it in his Chronicles, borrowing from Bale. John Stow refers to it but attributes it to a John Malvern. William Webbe refers to its "quantitative" meter and language approvingly, but his knowledge of the poem is indirect. Francis Meres later repeated Webbe's remarks.
Abraham FraunceAbraham Fraunce , was an English poet.-Life:A native of Shropshire, he was born between 1558 and 1560. His name appears in a list of pupils of Shrewsbury School in January 1571, and he joined St John's College, Cambridge, in 1576, becoming a fellow in 1580/1...
mentions Piers Plowman, but he merely repeats the identifying features printed in Crowley's preface and Bale's indices.
George PuttenhamGeorge Puttenham was a sixteenth-century English writer, literary critic, and notorious rake. He is generally considered to be the author of the enormously influential handbook on poetry and rhetoric, The Arte of English Poesie ....
, calls it a satire in his Arte of English Poesie, noting its obscure language unapprovingly. Others of this era also regarded Piers Plowman as a satire; perhaps the other plowman texts typically associated with it contributed to this generic classification.
Samuel PepysSamuel Pepys FRS, MP, JP, was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament who is now most famous for the diary he kept for a decade while still a relatively young man...
owned a copy of Piers Plowman. A Crowley edition owned in 1613 by an educated English Catholic, Andrew Bostoc, has its owner's notes responding to Crowley's in the margins, refuting them from the text itself, discriminating between the editor and the author/text. Milton cites "Chaucer's Ploughman" in "Of Reformation" (1641) when he is discussing poems that have described Constantine as a major contributor to the corruption of the church. The end of Piers Plowman, Passus 15, makes this point at length—but it is also made briefly in one stanza in The Ploughman's Tale (ll. 693-700). In "An Apology for a Pamphlet ..." Milton refers to The Vision and Crede of Pierce Ploughman, which might mean one or both of these texts. Perhaps it refers to Rogers' 1561 edition which put them together.
Edmund BoltonEdmund Mary Bolton , English historian and poet, was born in 1575.-Life:Nothing is known of his family or origins, although he referred to himself as a distant relative of George Villiers. Brought up a Roman Catholic, he was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. Bolton then lived in London at the...
argued for the language of the court as the appropriate language for writing history. For Bolton, Spenser's Hymns are good models, but the rest of his poems are not—and neither are those of "Jeff. Chaucer, Lydgate, Peirce Ploughman, or Laureat Skelton." John Pitts (1619) attributes Piers Plowman to John Malvern, Henry Peacham (1622) attributes it to Lydgate. Henry Selden (1622) appears to have read the poem closely enough to admire it for its criticism of the church as well as its judgment and invention. He gives the author as Robert Langland.
John WeeverJohn Weever , was an English poet and antiquary.-Life:He was a native of Preston, Lancashire. Little is known of his early life and his parentage is not certain...
(1631) also names Robert Langland, as does
David Buchanan (1652). Buchanan, however, makes Langland a Scot and attributes other works to him aside from Piers Plowman.
Thomas FullerThomas Fuller was an English churchman and historian. He is now remembered for his writings, particularly his Worthies of England, published after his death...
(1662) bases his remarks about Langland on Selden and Bale, emphasizing Langland's proto-Protestant status. Fuller also notes that
The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto ChristeThe Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe: written not longe after the yere of our Lorde. M. and three hundred is a short , anonymous English Christian text, probably written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and first printed in about 1531...
was "first set forth by
TindalWilliam Tyndale was an English scholar and translator who became a leading figure in Protestant reformism towards the end of his life. He was influenced by the work of Desiderius Erasmus, who made the Greek New Testament available in Europe, and by Martin Luther...
, since, exemplified by
Mr. FoxJohn Foxe was an English historian and martyrologist, the author of what is popularly known as Foxe's Book of Martyrs, , an account of Christian martyrs throughout Western history but emphasizing the sufferings of English Protestants and proto-Protestants from the fourteenth century through the...
." Since the language of this text is similar to that of Piers Plowman, Fuller attributes it to Langland as well. Anthony à Wood mentions both Malvern and Langland as author names.
Thomas DudleyThomas Dudley was a colonial magistrate who served several terms as governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Dudley was the chief founder of Newtowne, later Cambridge, Massachusetts, and built the town's first home...
, father of
Anne Dudley BradstreetAnne Dudley Bradstreet was New England's first published poet. Her work met with a positive reception in both the Old World and the New World.-Biography:...
(1612–72), brought a copy of Crowley's Piers Plowman to America.
Alexander PopeAlexander Pope was an 18th-century English poet, best known for his satirical verse and for his translation of Homer. He is the third-most frequently quoted writer in The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, after Shakespeare and Tennyson...
(1688–1744) owned a copy of Rogers' reprint of Crowley's edition of Piers Plowman with the Crede appended, and
Isaac D'IsraeliIsaac D'Israeli was a British writer, scholar and man of letters. He is best known for his essays, his associations with other men of letters, and for being the father of British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli....
(1766–1848) wrote in his Amenities of Literature that Pope had "very carefully analyzed the whole" of the latter text. D'Israeli also mentions Lord Byron's (1788–1824) praise for Piers Plowman.
19th–20th centuries
With its old language and alien worldview, Piers Plowman fell into obscurity until the nineteenth century, particularly the latter end. Barring Rogers, after Crowley, the poem was not published in its entirety until Thomas Whitaker's 1813 edition. It emerged at a time when amateur
philologistsPhilology is the study of language in written historical sources; it is a combination of literary studies, history and linguistics.Classical philology is the philology of Greek and Classical Latin...
began the groundwork of what would later become a recognized scholarly discipline. Whitaker's edition was based on a C-text, whereas Crowley used a B-text for his base.
With Whitaker an editorial tradition truly began in the modern sense, with each new editor striving to present the "authentic" Piers Plowman and challenging the accuracy and authenticity of preceding editors and editions. Then, as before in the English Reformation, this project was driven by a need for a national identity and history that addressed present concerns, hence analysis and commentary typically reflected the critic's political views. In the hands of Frederick Furnivall and W. W. Skeat, Piers Plowman could be, respectively, a consciousness-raising text in the Working Man's College or a patriotic text for
grammar schoolA grammar school is one of several different types of school in the history of education in the United Kingdom and some other English-speaking countries, originally a school teaching classical languages but more recently an academically-oriented secondary school.The original purpose of mediaeval...
pupils.
Piers Plowman has often been read primarily as a political document. In an 1894 study, J. J. Jusserand was primarily concerned with what he saw as the poem's psychological and sociopolitical content—as distinct from the aesthetic or literary—in a dichotomy common to all modern humanistic studies. Four years later
Vida Dutton Scudder Vida Dutton Scudder was an American educator, writer, and welfare activist in the social gospel movement. She was one of the most prominent lesbian authors of her time.-Early life:...
compared the poem with socialist ideas from the works of
Thomas CarlyleThomas Carlyle was a Scottish satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher during the Victorian era.He called economics "the dismal science", wrote articles for the Edinburgh Encyclopedia, and became a controversial social commentator.Coming from a strict Calvinist family, Carlyle was...
,
John RuskinJohn Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, also an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects ranging from geology to architecture, myth to ornithology, literature to education, and botany to political...
, and the Fabians.
Introduced to the emerging university programs for English language and literature, Piers Plowman helped round out the English
literary canonThe term Western canon denotes a canon of books and, more broadly, music and art that have been the most important and influential in shaping Western culture. As such, it includes the "greatest works of artistic merit." Such a canon is important to the theory of educational perennialism and the...
.
Related texts
Many subsequent texts – at least 14 – use characters from Piers Plowman, most often Piers. Many more texts are written with similar themes and characters, though not directly borrowing from Piers Plowman, until around the end of the 16th century. Conversely, Piers Plowman was preceded by and contemporary with a number of similar works in the 14th century. Together, these are referred to as the "
Piers Plowman traditionThe Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland's poem Piers Plowman...
".
Editions
- Economou, George (tr), William Langland's Piers Plowman: The C version (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996).
- Pearsall, Derek, ed. William Langland. Piers Plowman: A New Annotated Edition of the C-Text (Exeter, UK: University of Exeter Press, 2008) (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies).
Studies
- Brewer, C. Editing Piers Plowman: The Evolution of the Text (Cambridge, CUP, 1996) (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, 28).
- Benson, C. D. Public Piers Plowman: Modern Scholarship and Late Medieval English Culture (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003).
- Bowers, J. M. Chaucer and Langland: The Antagonistic Tradition (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007).
- Kelen, S. A. Langland's Early Modern Identities (New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).
External links
- International Piers Plowman Society Website of international scholarly organization for the study of Piers Plowman and other alliterative poems; includes searchable database of annotations of all scholarship on these poems since 1986.
- Piers Plowman Electronic Archive A multi-level, hyper-textually linked electronic archive of the textual tradition of all three versions of the fourteenth-century allegorical dream vision Piers Plowman.
- University of Virginia e-text of Piers Plowman.
- Project Gutenberg Consortia Center ebook of Piers Plowman.
- William Langland page at Harvard. With link to modern English text of Piers.
- Piers Plowman and the Rising of 1381.
- Piers Plowman and Its Sequence by John Matthews Manly, vol. 2, The End of the Middle Ages," in The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, 18 vols., Edited by A. W. Ward & A. R. Waller, (1907-21).
- Daniel F. Pigg, "Figuring subjectivity in Piers Plowman C' and 'The Parson's Tale' and 'Retraction': authorial insertion and identity poetics," Style, Fall 1997. Abstract: In Chaucer's Parson's Tale, Retraction, and Langland's C.5, the authors engage in a homologue to confession by which they inscribe their identities in their texts and become themselves the subjects of poetic reflection. The "autobiographical" passage which opens passus 5 combines autobiographical and confessional modes to reintegrate the penitent subject—both "Will" and WL—into the body of the Church. The Retraction is similarly to be understood as Chaucer's sincere questioning of his own "entente," the key action required of the penitent in the confessional. His deployment of both clerical and literary discourses in the Retraction demonstrates that the subject cannot be separated from institutions.
- Dr. Anthony Colaianne, Chris Baugh - Medieval English Narrator - listen to recorded excerpts of Medieval English literature, including Piers Plowman.
- Michael Johnston, "From Edward III to Edward VI: The Vision of Piers Plowman and Early Modern England'. Reformation: The Academic Journal of the Tyndale Society vol. 11 (2006) -
- Larry Scanlon, "Langland, Apocalypse and the Early Modern Editor," in Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England (Cambridge, 2007).
- Lawrence Warner, "An Overlooked Piers Plowman Excerpt and the Oral Circulation of Non-Reformist Prophecy, c. 1520-55". Yearbook of Langland Studies 21 (2007) -