Themes in English Literature

Piers Plowman by William Langland

Langland's poem is in part a work of social protest, written from the viewpoint of the common person. Most authorities now grant that the poem was probably written by one man, although some doubt has been expressed in the past on this point. Internal evidence indicates the author to be William Langland, a recipient of minor orders in the Church and a married man living in London (Abrams, 1025).

To emphasize the social or metrical aspects of Piers Plowman seems totally unfair to the poem, for it is essentially a religious work, filled with the religious doctrines, dogma, views, and sentiments of medieval Catholicism. In the poem, the poet has a series of visions which he relates to the reader, each vision concerned with humanity's relationships to God, relationships which concerned every aspect of life, according to medieval thought (Abrams, 1026). In the first vision, which is probably the best known, the poet dreams of a vast field of people going about all the tasks and activities of the poet's world? The vision was explained to him by a lady named Holy Church, who informed him that the castle at one end of the field was the home of Truth, or God, and that in the dungeon in the valley dwelt the Father of Falsehood, or Satan. When asked by the poet how he might save his soul, the lady replied that he should learn to accept Truth, along with love and pity for his fellow humans (Abrams, 1027).

The poet then envisioned a long, involved sequence in which appeared Lady Mede, representing just reward and bribery simultaneously. A king proposed to marry Lady Mede to Conscience, after her rescue from False, but Conscience proclaimed against her and refused. Bribery, it is implied, cannot ...