Piers Plowman

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Piers Plowman, the greatest poem of the Middle English Alliterative Revival, by Langland. It survives in about 50 manuscripts, in three widely varying versions, known as the A, B, and C texts. The A-text, totalling 2,567 lines in its longest version, was probably written about 1367–70; the B-text, a very considerable extension of the A-text, extends to 7,277 lines (or more), and was probably written about 1377–9; the C-text is a substantial revision of the B-text, about the same length, dating from about 1385–6. It is now generally agreed that the three versions were all the work of Langland. The principal division of the poem has been into two parts, the ‘Visio’ and the ‘Vita’, the ‘Visio’ comprising the Prologue and the first seven Passus in the B-text. This ‘Visio’—‘Vita’ distinction has been seen to be of such importance by some critics that they have argued that they are properly to be regarded as two distinct poems, but the distinction is not found in B manuscripts. The following account follows the B-text in its division into eight separate visions.

Vision 1. While wandering on the Malvern Hills, the narrator (who, it transpires later, is called Will) falls asleep and has a vision of a Tower where Truth dwells, a deep Dungeon, and between them ‘a fair feeld ful of folk’ where all the order of human society can be seen about their business. The worldly values thus raised are expounded by Lady Holy Church; the theme is sustained by the analytical trial of Lady Meed which considers whether Meed (Reward or payment) is to be given to Wrong or according to Conscience and Reason.

Vision 2. The narrator observes what J. A. Burrow has shown to be an established sequence of events: Sermon (preached by Reason); Confession (by the Seven Deadly Sins); Pilgrimage (to Truth, led by Piers the Plowman who first appears as the just leader on the road to Salvation); and Pardon (a paper pardon sent to Piers by Truth, but torn up by him when its validity is questioned by a priest, who rejects it as a moral statement rather than a papal document). The conflict with the priest awakens the dreamer; this is the end of the ‘Visio’.

Vision 3 shows Will turning to the faculties and sources of knowledge and understanding, as the search for Truth (now referred to as ‘Dowel’) becomes individualized. Will progressively consults Thought, Wit, Study, Clergy, Scripture, Ymagynatyf (Imagination—linked with Nature in an inner dream containing an inspired description of the workings of nature) and Reason.

Visions 4 and 5. The theme of these visions is Charity. Piers Plowman reappears, in a transfigured form in which his action is indistinguishable from that of Christ.

Vision 6. The Passion of Christ is described as the culmination of doing well; the death of Christ is evoked with great power, and after his death the Harrowing of Hell.

Visions 7 and 8. These Passus continue with the liturgical cycle begun in Lent and show the attempts to put into practice the lessons gained from observing the saving actions of Christ. The attempts to perfect the Church are still frustrated by evil-doers, as Piers Plowman had first been as he set out on his first pilgrimage, and the poem ends with Conscience setting out to find Piers, to lead the perfected search for salvation.

The strength of Piers Plowman does not lie in its structure or argument, both of which are often confusing and uncertain. But the passages of greatest imaginative power have a sublimity beyond the reach of any other medieval English writer.

Piers Plowman. Late 14th-cent. poem by William Langland. Over 50 manuscripts survive, representing progressive revisions known as the ‘Z’, ‘A’, ‘B’, and ‘C’ texts, of which ‘B’, comprising a prologue and twenty passus, is the most frequently read.

Cast in the familiar medieval form of a quest, the poem uses a series of dream-visions to trace the tortuous progress of ‘Will’ from intellectual wrangling to spiritual understanding as he searches for Truth and then for Do-Wel, Do-Bet, and Do-Best. The climax presents Christ's mortal ‘joust’ and triumph over hell with extraordinary power; yet the close brings another departure, as Conscience, frustrated by corruption within Christendom, sets out to walk the world in search of Piers Plowman. Piers, who has appeared as type of the virtuous poor, ideal Christian, and almost Christ himself, has by now fused into St Peter as archetypal pope. Throughout the poem, personified abstractions such as the comically depraved Seven Deadly Sins interact, and overlap, with contemporary caricatures including the self-indulgent Master of Divinity and the besmirched pilgrim Haukyn the Active Man. Langland's passionate commitment to spiritual and social reform finds expression in his restless and emphatic alliterative lines, and in a complex battery of literary devices including allegory, recurrent metaphors, word-play, and Latin quotation.

D. C. Whaley

Piers Plowman Late 14th‐cent. poem by William Langland. Cast in the familiar medieval form of a quest, the poem uses a series of dream‐visions to trace the tortuous progress of ‘Will’ from intellectual wrangling to spiritual understanding as he searches for Truth and then for Do‐Wel, Do‐Bet, and Do‐Best.

Piers Plowman see Langland, William .