Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman, also known by its Latin title Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman ("William's Vision of Piers Plowman"), is a Middle English poem written by William Langland around 1370–1386, possibly in 1377. The work is an allegorical narrative composed in unrhymed alliterative verse, with its sections called passus, a Latin word meaning "step." Many critics rank it among the finest English literary works of the Middle Ages, alongside the Pearl poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; it predates and is thought to have influenced Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The poem also contains the earliest known mention of a literary tradition involving Robin Hood.

The text

Scholars recognize three distinct versions of the poem, labeled the A-, B-, and C-texts. The B-text, the most frequently edited and translated, revises and expands the A-text by more than 4,000 lines. A fourth version, the Z-text, was discovered in the 1980s and combines elements from the A and C versions. Its authorship is heavily disputed, as critics suspect it may have been produced by a scribe rather than Langland himself.

Summary

The poem blends theological allegory with social satire. It follows the narrator, a dreamer named Will (a name that can be read literally or as an allegory for human will or desire), as he searches for the true Christian life within medieval Catholicism.

This quest unfolds through a series of dream visions, during which the dreamer seeks the allegorical figures Dowel ("Do-Well"), Dobet ("Do-Better"), and Dobest ("Do-Best"). The poem is divided into passus, though the divisions vary depending on the version. The following summary is based on the B-text.

Vision 1

In the first vision, the poem opens in the Malvern Hills, on the border of Worcestershire and Herefordshire. Will falls asleep and sees a tower on a hill and a fortress in a deep valley, symbols of heaven and hell, with a "fair field full of folk" between them, representing humanity. A satirical portrayal of various social classes follows, including a dream-like fable where a king is a cat and his people are rodents debating whether to bell him.

Holy Church then visits Will, explaining the tower of Truth and the nature of Truth itself. Will next encounters Lady Mede ("payment"), who is set to marry False. She travels to the royal court, where the king suggests she marry Conscience instead, but Conscience denounces her.