"Piers Plowman tradition The Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball (died 1381) and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland's poem ""Piers Plowman"". (A much larger number of texts, with less obvious connection to Piers Plowman, may also be considered part of the tradition.) Because the Plowman appears in the ""General Prologue"" to ""The Canterbury Tales"" by Geoffrey Chaucer but does not have his own tale"
"work is ""Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"". Langland's ""Piers Plowman"" (written c. 1360–87) or ""Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman"" (""William's Vision of Piers Plowman"") is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem, written in unrhymed alliterative verse. ""Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"" is a late 14th-century Middle English alliterative romance. It is one of the better-known Arthurian stories of an established type known as the ""beheading game"". Developing from Welsh, Irish and English tradition, ""Sir Gawain"" highlights the importance of honour and chivalry. Preserved in the same manuscript with Sir Gawayne were three other poems, now generally accepted as"
"referred to as the author of the poem, and when writers refer to a list of medieval authors, they will often mention ""Piers Plowman"" as an author's name or a substitute for one. One gets the overall impression that Langland and ""Piers Plowman"" had less existence as author and text than did the fictional figure of Piers, whose relationship to a definite authorial and textual origin had been obscured much earlier. Samuel Pepys owned a copy of ""Piers Plowman"". Milton cites ""Chaucer's Ploughman"" in ""Of Reformation"" (1641) when he is discussing poems that have described Constantine as a major contributor"
"Plowman"" is an important English alliterative poem; it was written between ""c"". 1370 and 1390. The form of alliterative verse changed gradually over time. From ""Piers Plowman"": <poem style=""margin-left: 2em""> ""A feir feld full of folk"" || ""fond I þer bitwene,"" ""Of alle maner of men,"" || ""þe mene and þe riche,"" ""Worchinge and wandringe"" || ""as þe world askeþ."" In modern spelling: ""A fair field full of folk"" || ""found I there between,"" ""Of all manner of men"" || ""the mean and the rich,"" ""Working and wandering"" || ""as the world asketh."" In modern translation: Among them I found"
"Pierce the Ploughman's Crede Pierce the Ploughman's Crede is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, lampooning the four orders of friars. Surviving in two complete 14th-century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the ""Crede"" can be dated on internal evidence to the short period between 1393 and 1400. The two manuscripts both include ""Piers Plowman"", and in the first, the ""Crede"" serves as an introduction to a C-text version of ""Piers Plowman"". Additionally, BL MS Harley 78 contains a fragment of the ""Crede"" copied c. 1460–70. The ""Crede"" was first printed in London by Reyner Wolfe, and then reprinted"
"on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212). This manuscript ascribes ""Piers Plowman"" to Willielmi de Langland, son of Stacy de Rokayle, ""who died in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire"". Other manuscripts name the author as Robert or William Langland, or Wilhelms W. (most likely shorthand for William of Wychwood). The poem itself also seems to point to Langland's authorship. At one point, the narrator remarks: ""I have lived in londe [...] my name is longe wille"" (B XV.152). This can be taken as a coded reference to"
"[or Pierce] ""Plowman"", which is in fact the conventional name of just one section of the poem. Some medievalists and text critics, beginning with John Matthews Manly, have posited multiple authorship theories for ""Piers"", an idea which continues to have a periodic resurgence in the scholarly literature. One scholar now disputes the single-author hypothesis, supposing that the poem may be the work of between two and five authors, depending upon how authorship is defined. In keeping with contemporary scholarly trends in textual criticism, critical theory, and the history of the book, Charlotte Brewer, among others, suggests that scribes and their"
"consciousness-raising text in the Working Man's College or a patriotic text for grammar school pupils. ""Piers Plowman"" has often been read primarily as a political document. In an 1894 study, J. J. Jusserand was primarily concerned with what he saw as the poem's psychological and sociopolitical content—as distinct from the aesthetic or literary—in a dichotomy common to all modern humanistic studies. In ""Le temps des laboureurs. Travail, ordre social et croissance en Europe (XIe-XIVe siècle)"" (Albin Michel 2012) historian of medieval labour Mathieu Arnoux devotes particular attention to ""Piers Plowman"" in a breakthrough attempt to identify theological causes for the"
"conflated with the author and dreamer-narrator of the poem at an early date, ""Piers Plowman"" or a Latin equivalent is often given as the name of the author, which indicates unfamiliarity with, or disbelief of, Crowley's preface. When Langland's poem is mentioned, it is often disparaged for its barbarous language. Similar charges were made against Chaucer, but he had more defenders and was already well established as a historical figure and ""authority."" Despite the work of Bale and Crowley, Langland's name appears to have remained unknown or unaccepted since other authors were suggested after Crowley's editions. Sometimes ""Piers Plowman"" was"
"NLW MS 733B Piers Plowman NLW MS 733B Piers Plowman is a version of the Middle English allegorical poem that combines text from versions 'A' and 'C'. It has been suggested that this manuscript, which dates from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, could help to track the evolution of the Piers Plowman poem. It was part of the manuscript collection that the National Library of Wales purchased from Plas Power, Denbighshire in 1913. Like NLW MS 735C, this volume might have once belonged to the Welsh scholar and lexicographer Thomas Lloyd, and could be one of the 'three"
"growth of agricultural production from the 11th century to the 14th century. Many subsequent texts – at least 14 – use characters from ""Piers Plowman"", most often Piers himself. Many more texts were written with similar themes and characters, though not directly borrowing from ""Piers Plowman"", until around the end of the 16th century. Conversely, ""Piers Plowman"" was preceded by and contemporary with a number of similar works in the 14th and 15th centuries. Together, these are referred to as the ""Piers Plowman tradition"". In 2017, a UK theatre production of the poem was developed by Tom Chivers, under the"
"of the Piers Plowman tradition, such as Edmund Spenser's ""The Shepheardes Calendar"" which makes use of a character named ""Piers"" and consciously borrows lines from ""The Plowman's Tale"". Spenser's character, Colin Clout, who appears in two of his poems, is also a Piers-like figure derived from John Skelton. John Bale regarded Skelton as a ""vates pierius"" - poetic prophet, with ""pierius"" perhaps alluding to Piers, the pre-eminent English prophet-poet. Bale was pleased with Skelton's attacks on the clergy and his open breach of clerical celibacy. ""Colin Clout"" (1521) is one of Skelton's anti-Wolsey satires where the title character, a vagabond,"
"to America. Alexander Pope (1688–1744) owned a copy of Rogers' reprint of Crowley's edition of ""Piers Plowman"" with the ""Crede"" appended, and Isaac D'Israeli (1766–1848) wrote in his ""Amenities of Literature"" that Pope had ""very carefully analyzed the whole"" of the latter text. D'Israeli also mentions Lord Byron's (1788–1824) praise for ""Piers Plowman"". With its old language and alien worldview, ""Piers Plowman"" fell into obscurity until the nineteenth century. Barring Rogers, after Crowley, the poem was not published in its entirety until Thomas Whitaker's 1813 edition. It emerged at a time when amateur philologists began the groundwork of what would"
"Walter de Brugge Walter de Brugge, or Walter de Brigge (died 1396) was an English-born clergyman and judge in fourteenth-century Ireland; much of his career was spent in the service of the Earl of March. He is mainly remembered now as the first person known to have owned a copy of the celebrated poem ""Piers Plowman"". Both versions of his family name are early forms of Brydges, so he may have been connected to the Brydges family of Coberley in Gloucestershire which held the title Baron Chandos from about 1337, and who at that time usually spelt their name Brugge."
"because of its inclusion in the 1561 edition of ""Piers Plowman"", although this edition dropped the preface by Robert Crowley that names Langland. One reader of the 1561 ""Piers Plowman"" (which appends the ""Crede"") made notes (dated 1577) in his copy that quote John Bale's attribution of ""Piers Plowman"" to Langland (""ex primis J. Wiclevi discipulis unum"") in Bale's ""Index...Scriptorum"". Because of differences in language and his belief that Chaucer lived later than Langland, the reader concludes that the ""Crede"" alone (and not ""Piers Plowman"") is Chaucer's. Like much political or religious poetry of the Alliterative Revival (i.e., ""Piers Plowman"","
"finely crafted. While the friars squabble and bicker with one another, the true (i.e., Lollard) Christians form a single unity; at the end of the poem, in the words of Barr, 'the voices of Peres, narrator and poet all merge' into a single 'I': Pierce the Ploughman's Crede Pierce the Ploughman's Crede is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, lampooning the four orders of friars. Surviving in two complete 14th-century manuscripts and two early printed editions, the ""Crede"" can be dated on internal evidence to the short period between 1393 and 1400. The two manuscripts both include ""Piers Plowman"","
"or four old manuscripts' that are referred to in the 1778 catalogue of the Plas Power library. NLW MS 733B Piers Plowman NLW MS 733B Piers Plowman is a version of the Middle English allegorical poem that combines text from versions 'A' and 'C'. It has been suggested that this manuscript, which dates from the first quarter of the fifteenth century, could help to track the evolution of the Piers Plowman poem. It was part of the manuscript collection that the National Library of Wales purchased from Plas Power, Denbighshire in 1913. Like NLW MS 735C, this volume might have"
"Psychomachia The Psychomachia (""Battle of spirits"" or ""soul war"") by the Late Antique Latin poet Prudentius, from the early fifth century AD, is probably the first and most influential ""pure"" medieval allegory, the first in a long tradition of works as diverse as the ""Romance of the Rose,"" ""Everyman,"" and ""Piers Plowman."" In slightly less than a thousand lines, the poem describes the conflict of vices and virtues as a battle in the style of Virgil's ""Aeneid."" Christian faith is attacked by and defeats pagan idolatry to be cheered by a thousand Christian martyrs. The work was extremely popular, and"
"well as three significant references to Mary). He actually added a line to his second and third editions that clearly refers to Marian intercession (F1r). After 1550, it was not printed again until 1813 except for Owen Rogers' 1561 edition -- a cheap knock-off of Crowley's text. The few people who mention ""Piers Plowman"" before 1700 usually attribute it to someone other than Langland, and often it is unclear whether they are referring to Langland's poem or one of the many other texts circulating in print as part of the Piers Plowman tradition, particularly ""The Ploughman's Tale"". Since Piers was"
"The greatest of them, the Gawain Poet, author of ""Pearl"" and ""Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"", and that of ""Alliterative Morte Arthure"" are both completely anonymous, though the former has been tentatively identified as a John Massey, member of a Cheshire landowning family. Even William Langland, the author of the hugely influential ""Piers Plowman"", has been identified largely through conjecture. The longest poem of the Revival (over 14,000 lines), ""The Destruction of Troy"", is ascribed to a John Clerk from Lancashire, but little else is known about him. A notable exception to this lack of information is Scottish court"
"dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson has demonstrated. in their work,""The Langland Myth"", they claim there is not enough evidence to suggest that Langland is, in fact, the author, but instead that it is the work of a man by the name of William de la Rokele. In the sixteenth century, when ""Piers"" was first printed, authorship was attributed by various antiquarians (such as John Bale) and poets to John Wycliffe and Geoffrey Chaucer, amongst others. Some sixteenth- and seventeenth-century persons regarded the poem as anonymous, and/or associated it with texts in the plowman tradition"
"the great satirical poem ""Piers Plowman"". The two most remarkable and accomplished poems in the manuscript are both long exercises in a late form of alliterative verse with a superimposed rhyme-scheme: ""Pater Noster"" and ""The Three Dead Kings"". Some modern commentators have suggested that these poems cannot be by Audelay, as they show a very high level of technical skill not immediately apparent in other poems in the manuscript, but others have maintained that they were most probably Audelay's own work. John Audelay John Audelay (or Awdelay; died c. 1426) was an English priest and poet from Haughmond Abbey, in"
"a regular venue of the Malvern Fringe Festival. William Langland's famous 14th century poem ""The Visions of Piers Plowman"" (1362) was inspired by the Malvern Hills and the earliest poetic allusion to them occurs in the poem ""And on a Maye mornynge on Malverne hylles"". Langland, was possibly educated at the priory of Great Malvern. C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien are among the authors that have frequented Malvern. Legend states that, after drinking in a Malvern pub one winter evening, they were walking home when it started to snow. They saw a lamp post shining out through"
"did not prevent him from enjoying the poem. Walter de Brugge Walter de Brugge, or Walter de Brigge (died 1396) was an English-born clergyman and judge in fourteenth-century Ireland; much of his career was spent in the service of the Earl of March. He is mainly remembered now as the first person known to have owned a copy of the celebrated poem ""Piers Plowman"". Both versions of his family name are early forms of Brydges, so he may have been connected to the Brydges family of Coberley in Gloucestershire which held the title Baron Chandos from about 1337, and who"
"of ""Piers Plowman"" in 1550 and 1561 by Robert Crowley and Owen Rogers. William Tyndale may have (and was thought by some contemporaries) to have supplied the preface to the printed edition of the ""Praier and Complaynte"", which aroused the critical pen of Thomas More. John Foxe did his part to canonize the same text in four editions of his famous ""Actes and Monuments"" from 1570 to 1610. Like ""Jack Upland"", ""The Plowman's Tale"" became associated with Geoffrey Chaucer and was added by various editors to four editions of Chaucer's collected works between 1542 and 1602. ""I Playne Piers which"
"Caxton's press were the Bible and ""Piers Plowman"". Robert Crowley's 1550 editions of ""Piers Plowman"" present the poem as a proto-Protestant goad to the reformation of religion and society. In the passus summaries in the second and third editions, Crowley emphasizes material in the poem warning of political instability and widespread corruption when the king is a child (as was then the case). Crowley may have made small attempts to remove or soften single references to transubstantiation, the Mass, purgatory, and the Virgin Mary as a mediator and object of devotion (although almost a dozen references to purgatory remain, as"
"the rebels and likening them to wild animals. Geoffrey Chaucer, who lived in Aldgate and may have been in London during the revolt, used the rebel killing of Flemings as a metaphor for wider disorder in ""The Nun's Priest's Tale"" part of ""The Canterbury Tales"", parodying Gower's poem. Chaucer otherwise made no reference to the revolt in his work, possibly because as he was a client of the King it would have been politically unwise to discuss it. William Langland, the author of the poem ""Piers Plowman"", which had been widely used by the rebels, made various changes to its"
"and reality in ""Piers Plowman"" is blurred, and the entire passage, as Wendy Scase observes, is reminiscent of the false confession tradition in medieval literature (also seen in the ""Confessio Goliae"" and in Jean de Meun's ""Roman de la Rose""). A similar passage in the final Passus of the B and C texts provides further ambiguous details on the poet's wife and his torments by Elde (Old Age), including baldness, gout, and impotence. This may indicate that the poet had reached middle age by the 1370s, but the accuracy of the passage is called into question by the conventional nature"
"speche than men of the north with men of the south, therefore it is that Mercii, that beeth men of myddel Engelond, as it were parteners of the endes, understondeth better the side langages, northerne and southerne, than northerne and southerne understondeth either other…"" It was with the fourteenth century that major works of English literature began once again to appear; these include the so-called Pearl Poet's ""Pearl"", ""Patience"", ""Cleanness"", and ""Sir Gawain and the Green Knight""; Langland's political and religious allegory ""Piers Plowman""; John Gower's ""Confessio Amantis""; and the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, the most highly regarded English poet"
"is plausible for a text revised by its author. Each version has unique inclusions and omissions; only 35 percent of the lines in A are shared by B and C. It was a ""social protest"" poem that arose in the aftermath of the Great Famine of 1315-1317. It clearly targeted the negligences and vices of specific social groups, such as the clergy and nobility, within the context of the failures of the Great Famine and wars of the early 14th century. The tradition of social protest poems in England would later culminate with ""Piers Plowman"" – see Piers Plowman tradition"
"names Robert Langland, as does David Buchanan (1652). Buchanan, however, makes Langland a Scot and attributes other works to him aside from ""Piers Plowman"". Thomas Fuller (1662) bases his remarks about Langland on Selden and Bale, emphasizing Langland's putative proto-Protestant status. Fuller also notes that ""The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe"" was ""first set forth by Tindal, since, exemplified by Mr. Fox."" Since the language of this text is similar to that of ""Piers Plowman"", Fuller attributes it to Langland as well. Thomas Dudley, father of Anne Dudley Bradstreet (1612–72), brought a copy of Crowley's ""Piers Plowman"""
"This papyrus, now displayed at the Louvre in Paris, held the fragment with approximately 100 verses of his Partheneion (a poem sung by a chorus of adolescent girls). Here is an example of choral poetry, from Alcman's Partheneion: A photo of the papyrus containing Alcman's Partheneion fragment can be seen here: Partheneion fragment on papyrus Another Ancient Greek lyric poet, named Pindar, justified and exalted choral poetry at a time when society was turning away from it. He was also one of the nine lyric poets (like Alcman), and is said to be the greatest, despite the fact that his"
"second (1542) edition of Chaucer's ""Works"", under the imprints of William Bonham (STC 5069) and John Reynes (STC 5070). After 1542, ""The Plowman's Tale"" appeared in new and reprinted editions of Chaucer's ""Works"" based on Thynne's text for some two centuries, during which the Chaucer canon and order of the ""Canterbury Tales"" was quite fluid. Thomas Tyrwhitt finally excluded ""The Plowman's Tale"" from his 1775 edition of the poet's work. The king's antiquary (under Henry VIII), John Leland (c. 1506–52), seems to have confused ""Piers Plowman"" and ""The Plowman's Tale"", referring to ""Petri Aratoris Fabula"" (Peter/Piers Plowman's Tale) as a"