Piers Plowman by William Langland

First published: c. 1362-c. 1393, as The Vision of William, Concerning Piers the Plowman (A Text, c. 1362; B Text, c. 1377; C Text, c. 1393)

Type of work: Poetry

Type of plot: Religious

Time of plot: Fourteenth century

Locale: England

Principal characters

• The Poet, also known as Will
• Piers the Plowman, an English plowman who becomes an allegorical figure of Christ incarnate
• Lady Mede, an allegorical figure representing both just reward and bribery
• Conscience, ,
• Reason, ,
• Thought, ,
• Wit, ,
• Study, ,
• Clergy, ,
• Scripture, ,
• Faith, ,
• Hope, and
• Charity, allegorical figures

The Poem:

The narrator, generally referred to as Will and presented as the author of the poem, wanders the world dressed as a hermit, until one May morning, near Malvern Hills, he falls asleep and dreams. In the vision, he sees a field full of folk of all social classes, including beggars, members of religious orders, knights, kings, and plowmen, going about the various activities of life, with a tower at one end and a dungeon located in a hollow beneath. At this point, a group of mice and rats assemble to determine what action to take against a cat at court who has been terrorizing them for some time. They agree that the best plan will be to put a bell around the cat’s neck, but then they realize they do not have the courage to attempt it. One sensible mouse suggests that they are better off with the cat than with a different cat or on their own.

A woman named Holy Church explains to Will that the castle is the home of Truth, or God, and that the dungeon is the home of Wrong, or Satan. She advises Will that to save his soul he needs to follow Truth. The poet then witnesses the making of arrangements to marry Lady Mede (Reward) to False; dispute over the marriage is eventually brought to London to be adjudicated before the king. The king proposes instead that she marry Conscience, who refuses the marriage, precipitating a series of debates on the nature of meed, or reward. The vision ends hopefully, with the king resolving to rule with the help of Reason and Conscience.

In a second dream vision, the poet hears a sermon calling for the repentance of society delivered to the field of folk by Reason, followed by the public confessions of representatives of each of the seven deadly sins. Society decides to search for Truth, and the farmer Piers Plowman, a long time follower of Truth, offers to show the people the way if they will help him plow his half-acre field. The attempt at plowing together eventually fails, despite the efforts of Hunger to help Piers motivate the workers. Before they leave to seek Truth, Piers is offered a pardon by Truth, telling him only to “Do-Well.” Piers then tears the pardon to pieces, vowing to seek Truth himself. After waking, the dreamer spends a long time pondering the meaning of this vision and again becomes a wanderer.

The poet continues to seek Do-Well, and, after a waking dispute with two Franciscan friars on the nature of Do-Well and Do-Evil, falls into a third dream. In this vision, Thought advises him to progressively explore key stages called Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best. In his exploration he meets such characters as Wit and his wife, Dame Study, who directs him to her cousin, Clergy, and his wife, Scripture. Failing to understand their explanations of Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best, the frustrated dreamer falls asleep in his dream, and is snatched up in this dream-within-a-dream by Fortune, accompanied by such followers as Lust and Recklessness, whom the poet in turn follows throughout his life. Scripture and the Emperor Trajan, who has been a virtuous man although a pagan, shows him the error of his ways before he has a vision of the natural universe as guided by Reason before waking back into the “outer” dream. Then he meets Imaginative, with whom he engages in a series of discussions about the nature of learning and religion.

After spending several years as a wandering beggar, Will falls into a fourth vision, in which he continues his investigation of religious ideas at a dinner at the house of Conscience with such characters as Clergy, Patience, and Scripture. After hearing some dubious advice from a doctor of divinity, Conscience and Will go traveling with Patience and meet Hawkin the Active Man, who wears a badly soiled coat of Christendom. Hawkin undergoes a religious conversion himself, recognizing his sinfulness and his dependence upon grace as a result of their discussions.

During the fifth vision, Will listens to Anima’s discourse on the ideals of spiritual development and the nature of charity. In an inner dream within this dream, he meets Piers Plowman again, who shows him the Tree of Charity that grows in people’s bodies. The narrator then meets the characters of Faith (Abraham), Hope (Moses), and the Good Samaritan (Charity and Christ). The Samaritan explains the nature of the Trinity and the need for repentance.

After another long period of travel, the poet sleeps again and, in a sixth vision, witnesses the Crucifixion; a debate by Mercy, Truth, Righteousness, and Peace on the ethical issues of the Redemption; and the Harrowing of Hell.

In another waking section, Will writes down the dreams to this point and then attends Easter Mass with his family before falling into the seventh dream, in which he sees Piers, now identified with Jesus Christ, beginning the building of the Christian Church, a house called Unity. The church community is attacked by Pride and his host of vices, and takes refuge in Unity with Conscience leading the resistance.

In the next waking section, the poet meets Need, then falls asleep and, in the eighth dream vision, sees the Antichrist and the massed powers of sin attack Unity. After the dreamer is smitten by Old Age, he enters Unity to find it under attack by Hypocrisy. After some discussion, in which Conscience argues that only Piers Plowman is needed to help them, Good Manners persuades Peace to let Friar Flatterer into Unity to see to the sick, but once in, he weakens Contrition and opens the way for the entry of Sloth and Pride. Conscience calls for Clergy to help defend Unity, but he has been put into a daze by the Friar. The dream ends with Conscience resolved to set off on a pilgrimage in search of Piers Plowman, at which point the dreamer wakes up.

Bibliography

Alford, John A., ed. A Companion to “Piers Plowman.” Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988. Eleven original essays, each followed by a selective bibliography, provide beginning and advanced students with essential information on every major aspect of Langland’s poem. Includes an introduction surveying the six hundred years of the poem’s critical history.

Baldwin, Anna P. A Guidebook to “Piers Plowman.” New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Student guide to the text, including information on Langland’s sources; the religious, political, and social issues raised by the poem; and Langland’s historical, theological, and psychological assumptions in writing the poem.

Blanch, Robert J., ed. Style and Symbolism in “Piers Plowman”: A Modern Critical Anthology. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969. Reprints thirteen essays from a number of scholarly journals, many of them unavailable in smaller libraries. Designed to orient the beginning student to the major issues in the study of Piers Plowman.

Hewett-Smith, Kathleen M., ed. William Langland’s “Piers Plowman”: A Book of Essays. New York: Routledge, 2001. Collection of interpretative essays, including discussions of the poem’s historical context, Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer as religious writers, gender issues, and the use of allegory in the work.

Hussey, S. S., ed. “Piers Plowman”: Critical Approaches. London: Methuen, 1969. Twelve original essays on the poem. Hussey’s introduction to the collection surveys the basic information about Langland and Piers Plowman for beginning students.

Kasten, Madeleine. In Search of “Kynde Knowynge”: “Piers Plowman” and the Origin of Allegory. New York: Rodopi, 2007. Kasten applies literary and cultural critic Walter Benjamin’s theories about German baroque allegory to this analysis of the narrative allegory in Piers Plowman.

Kelen, Sarah A. Langland’s Early Modern Identities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. Traces the reception of Piers Plowman from the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, examining how readers in these years interpreted the poem to fit their own ideas of the Middle Ages.

Scott, Anne M. “Piers Plowman” and the Poor. Dublin: Four Courts, 2004. A scholarly examination of the poem within a deeper investigation of medieval ideas about poverty and the poor. For advanced students. Includes a bibliography and an index.

Simpson, James. “Piers Plowman”: An Introduction to the B Text. 2d rev. ed. Exeter, England: University of Exeter Press, 2007. A detailed overview of the B version of the poem, which is the most frequently encountered form of the work. Summarizes the range of critical opinion on key issues and includes comparisons to similar material found in the Canterbury Tales, a contemporary work by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Zeeman, Nicolette. “Piers Plowman” and the Medieval Discourse of Desire. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006. A scholarly treatment of how Piers Plowman and other medieval literature explores the nature of intellectual and spiritual desire.