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Piers Plowman (w. ca. 1360–1399) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem byWilliam Langland. more...

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It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (Latin for "step"). Piers is considered by many critics one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. 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 (donjon) in a deep valley; between these two symbols of heaven and hell is a "fair field full of folk", representing the world of mankind. 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.

Title and authorship

It is now commonly accepted that Piers Plowman was written by a William Langland, about whom little is known. This attribution of the poem to Langland rests principally on the evidence of an early-fifteenth-century manuscript of the C-text(see below) of Piers held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212), which ascribes the work to one 'Willielmus de Langlond':

Memorandum quod Stacy de Rokayle pater willielmi de Langlond qui stacius fuit generosus & morabatur in Schiptoun vnder whicwode tenens domini le Spenser in comitatu Oxoniensi qui predictus willielmus fecit librum qui vocatur Perys ploughman.

(It should be noted that Stacy de Rokayle was the father of William de Langlond; this Stacy was of noble birth and dwelt in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire. The aforesaid William made the book which is called Piers Plowman.)

Other manuscripts also name the author as "Robert or William langland", or "Wilhelmus W." (which could be shorthand for "William of Wychwood").

The attribution to a William Langland is also based on internal evidence, primarily a seemingly autobiographical section in Passus 5 of the C-text of the poem. The main narrator of the poem in all the versions is named Will, with allegorical resonances clearly intended, and Langland (or Longland) is thought to be indicated as a surname through apparent puns; e.g., at one point the narrator remarks: "I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille" (B.XV.152). This could be a coded reference to the poet's name, in the style of much late-medieval literature. Langland's authorship, however, is not entirely beyond dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson has demonstrated.

Read more at Wikipedia.org