WILLIAM LANGLAND

WILLIAM LANGLAND (1330–1386)

• Reformer yet a pious Cathalic
• The Vision of Piers the Plowman
• vivid and trustworthy source for the social and economic history of the time
• 50 manuscripts, 3 versions (A, B, C texts)
• Some critics think the text could have been written by several authors
• Alliterative Revival (Two major works: Piers Plowman & Sir Gawain & the Green Knight)
• Noble and lofty style
• Great imaginative power

Piers the Plowman

• Two sections-Visio and Vita
• Begins with a vision of the world seen from Malvern Hills
• Series of dream visions dealing with socio-spiritual predicament
• Combination of realism and allegory, theological reasoning and satire, sublime religious feeling

and political comment

• At the beginning the dreamer goes to sleep among the Malvern hills and sees a vision of the world in the guise of a field full of folk thronging a valley bounded on one side by a cliff, on which stands the tower of Truth, and, on the other lies the dungeon of Wrong. Within this valley begin the incidents of his first vision, and, though they range far, there is never any suggestion of discontinuity, at the end of the vision the dreamer wakes for only a moment, and, immediately falling asleep, sees again the same field of folk and another series of events unfolding themselves in rapid succession beneath the cliff with its high-built tower, until finally, he wakes “meatless and moneyless in Malvern hills. The third vision has no connection with Malvern hills and thus progresses The Vision of Piers the Plowman.