William Langland:
William Langland:
Almost
nothing is known about his best contemporaries of Chaucer. His fame mainly
rests on his work ‘The vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman’ better
known as ‘Piers the Plowman’.
v
Piers the Plowman:
*
The poem has come down to us in three different texts known as- A Text,
B Text and C Text.
a)
A Text
contains 2500 lines (a prologue and 11
cantos) and appeared in 1362.
b)
B Text contains
7200 lines (a revision of the first
and a continuation with the prologue and 20 cantos) and appeared in 1377.
c)
C Text contains
7300 lines (about the same length as
the B text and is divided into 23
cantos) and appeared in 1400.
*
It is thought that Langland only composed the A Text while the both B and
C Text have composed by a later inferior poet.
*
The poem written in alliterative lines consists of three successive visions.
The first two visions are intimately connected whereas the third is incoherent
one.
*
In the first vision the poet while lying down on the Malvern hills on a May
morning dreams a high Tower (Truth)
in the East and a dark Dungeon (Wrong)
in the west and in between a field full of people coming from all classes and
conditions- beggars, friars, priests, lawyers, hermits and nuns. In another
vision he sees Lady Med, Reason and others. Confusion arises and then Lady Holy
Church exhorts them all
to seek the Truth. In the next vision Piers the Plowman appears to guide the
way to the thousand men to the path of Truth.
*
To J.Long- “Its tremendous appeal to
justice and common honesty, its clarion call to every man, whether king,
priest, noble, or laborer, to do his Christian duty takes from it any trace of
prejudice or bigotry with which such works usually abound. Its loyalty to the
Church, while denouncing abuses that had crept into it in that period, was one
of the great influences which led to the Reformation in England. Its two great principles,
the equality of men before God and the dignity of honest labor, roused a whole
nation of freemen. Altogether it is one of the world’s great works, partly
because of its national influence, partly because it is the very best picture
we possess of the social life of social life of the 14th century.”
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