Content: introduction

CONTENT:
INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………………………..3
1 . The literary work………………………………………………………………...4
2 . The Black Death and the Revolt of 1381………………………………………..5
3 . The purpose of Pilgrimage………………………………………………………9
4 . The figures of Piers the Plowman and Will the Dreamer……………………….15
5 . Imaginative berates the Dreamer Will………………………….........................19
6 . Relationship with Other Works ……………………………………………….21
CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………..30
GLOSSARY……………………………………………………………..……….31
REFERENCE……………………………………………………………………33

Introduction
William Langland wrote the poem Piers Plowman over the course of about twenty years in the Late Middle Ages, completing the earliest version in the mid-1360s, and longer revised versions in the late 1370s and mid-1380s. Fifty-two early manuscripts of Piers Plowman have survived; this large number attests to the poem’s popularity. Four editions were also printed in the 15th century. All of these versions of Piers Plowman vary in length, content, and structure. Scholars have divided the versions into A, B, C, and Z texts. Of these, the B text is regarded as the most poetic, with the sharpest satire. The poem was produced during a period of major political, economic, and religious upheaval in England. Half of the population had perished in the Black Death of 1347-1351, just ten years before. England was also fighting the Hundred Year’s War with France. Depopulation brought about social unrest and popular uprisings. Piers Plowman is written in sympathy with the common peasant, against unfair dealings by the King, courts, clergy, and tradesmen, in a scathing indictment of corruption and greed. The first two versions of the poem were written just prior to the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. Leaders of the revolt quoted from passages in Piers Plowman to motivate the peasants. (In the third version of the poem, the C-text, written after this revolt, Langland removed a particularly intense passage in which Piers tears up a priest’s pardon). The poem was used for political purposes again in the sixteenth century, when its criticisms of the clergy were cited by early Protestants. This was also an era of flourishing literary activity. Contemporary literature included the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer and the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It was written in language that all literate English speakers of the time could understand, in what is now called Middle English—a combination of the French of the Norman elite and the Anglo-Saxon of the lower classes. Contemporary readers require assistance to understand Middle English, so the poem is most often read in translation to Modern English.

1 . The literary work

An alliterative Middle English poem set mainly in Malvern Hills, Westminster, and London in the fourteenth century; composed in three versions: the unfinished “A text,” written c. 1368–75; the “B text,” written 1377–79; and the “C text,” written 1382–88.In a series of eight dreams (and two dreams-within-dreams), Will the Dreamer deals with concerns such as truth, reward, and charity while trying to discover how to save his soul. He seeks the embodiment of Christian living—both social and personal. Unlike modern works that feature the author’s name prominently on the cover, medieval poems were frequently written and read without much regard for the author’s identity. In the case of Piers Plowman, we have some evidence for the poet’s name; a handwritten note in an early fifteenth-century manuscript attributes the poem to “Willielm[us] de Langlond,” which seems confirmed by this cryptogram in the poem itself: “‘I have lived in land,’ said I, ‘my name is Long Will’” (Langland, Piers Plowman, B. 15.152). Since no other information about “William Langland” has come to light, however, this name is mainly a convenience, rather than a helpful piece of historical information. All other biographical materials about the poet come from the poem itself. The opening episode of Piers Plowman shows a strong knowledge of the area around Malvern Hills (in south west Worcestershire), and it is clear that Langland spent much time in London as well. He was married, and was associated with the Church at the lowest levels of clerical orders, probably as an acolyte who earned his living by saying prayers for benefactors (dead or living). But writing poetry—“medd with making verses,” as one character puts it (Piers Plowman, B.12.16)—was really Langland’s life’s work. Over a period stretching from as early as the 1360s—when he was in his thirties—to his death sometime after 1387 or 1388, Langland obsessively wrote and rewrote his poem. The only version we can be sure Langland believed was complete is the B text, on which the following entry is based.
On July 16, 1377, a ten-year-old boy was crowned king of England. Richard II’s grandfather, Edward III, had reigned for over 50 years, but Edward’s oldest son and would-be heir to the throne—Edward Prince of Wales, the beloved “Black Prince”—had died in 1376, a year before his father. The Black Prince’s death dashed England’s hopes for a renewal of strong leadership after King Edward’s increasingly imprudent reign. During the “Hundred Years War” with France, for instance, Edward had signed a treaty in 1360, in which he ceded both his claim to the French crown and most of his territories in France, receiving in return only a ransom for King Jean II of France. In later years, a foolish policy of excessive favoritism toward a few courtiers, including his mistress, Alice Perrers, had further decreased the public’s faith in the king. The crowning of Richard did little to ameliorate the situation. During Richard II’s minority, England was ruled by councils who were often at odds with the young king’s four surviving uncles. These instabilities culminated in 1399, when Richard’s cousin, Henry of Lancaster (Henry IV), seized the throne. The strife continued in the fifteenth century’s War of the Roses between two clans, the Yorks and Lancasters, who traced their ancestry to Richard II’s uncles.