Middle English Literature

WILLIAM LANGLAND ( c. 1330 - 1387)

Langland, William, c.1332-c.1400, putative author ofPiers Plowman. He was born probably at Ledbury near the Welsh marshes and may have gone to school at Great Malvern Priory. Although he took minor orders he never became a priest. Later in London he apparently eked out his living by singing masses and copying documents. His great work,Piers Plowman, or, more precisely,The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, is an allegorical poem in unrhymed alliterative verse, regarded as the greatest Middle English poem prior to Chaucer.

Piers Plowman

It is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland.Piers is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during the Middle Ages. The poem—part theological allegory, part social satire—concerns the narrator's intense quest for the true Christian life, which is told from the point of view of the medieval Catholic mind. This quest entails a series of dream-visions and an examination into the lives of three allegorical characters, Dowel ("Do-Well" ), Dobet ("Do-Better" ), and Dobest ("Do-Best" ).

The poem begins in the Malvern Hills in Malvern, Worcestershire. A man named Will falls asleep and has a vision of a tower set upon a hill and a fortress  in a deep valley; between these symbols of heaven and hell is a "fair field full of folk", representing the world of mankind. In fact, he has different visions, which he describes, and in which he exposes the corruptions of society, the dissoluteness of the clergy, and the allurements to sin, with considerable bitterness. 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. It is both a social satire and a vision of the simple Christian life. The poem consists of three dream visions: (1) in which Holy Church and Lady Meed (representing the temptation of riches) woo the dreamer; (2) in which Piers leads a crowd of penitents in search of St. Truth; and (3) the vision of Do-well (the practice of the virtues), Do-bet (in which Piers becomes the Good Samaritan practicing charity), and Do-best (in which the simple plowman is identified with Jesus himself).

The works ofGeoffrey Chaucer mark the brilliant culmination of Middle English literature. Chaucer'sThe Canterbury Tales are stories told each other by pilgrims—who comprise a very colourful cross section of 14th-century English society—on their way to the shrine at Canterbury. The tales are cast into many different verse forms and genres and collectively explore virtually every significant medieval theme. Chaucer's wise and humane work also illuminates the full scope of medieval thought. Overshadowed by Chaucer but of some note are the works ofJohn Gower.