Piers Plowman
Trinity College, Cambridge
MS B.15.17 (W)
The dreamer asleep in an
initial, from Corpus Christi
College, Oxford MS 201 (F)
In a somer seson, whan softe was the sonne,
I shoop me into shroudes as I a sheep were,
In habite as an heremite unholy of werkes,
Wente wide in this world wondres to here.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bourne syde;
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres,
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Thanne gan I meten a merveillous swevene -That I was in a wildernesse, wiste I nevere where.
A[c] as I biheeld into the eest an heigh to the sonne,
I seigh a tour on a toft trieliche ymaked,
A deep dale bynethe, a dongeon therinne,
With depe diches and derke and dredfulle of sighte.
A fair feeld ful of folk fond I ther bitwene -Of alle manere of men, the meene and the riche,
Werchynge and wandrynge as the world asketh.
Piers Plowman B 1.1-19
Piers Plowman: the conventional view of the text
A-Version
c.2500 ll.; 11 passus + prologue
late 1360s (Kane 1368-74)
10 MSS (scattered)
3 dreams
B-Version
c. 7200 ll. (700 added; 4000 continuation); prologue + 20 passus
late 1370s (Kane 1377-81)
14 MSS; Crowley 1550 print; 1 B + A MS. Metropolitan circulation.
8 dreams total, incl. 2 dreams-within-a-dream
C-Version
Revision of B; 100 lines longer w/many alterations & omissions;
Prologue + 22 passus (last two unrevised)
by 1387 (Kane); 1388 (Middleton)
18 MSS; 6 A+C; 3 C + A + B (western circulation)
POETIC STYLES and DIALECTS OF LATE MEDIEVAL ENGLAND (1)
The wery huntere, slepynge in his bed,
To wode ayeyn his mynde goth anon;
The juge dremeth how his plees ben sped;
The cartere dremeth how his cart is gon;
The riche, of gold; the knyght fyght with his fon;
The syke met he drynketh of the tonne;
The lovere met he hath his lady wonne.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Maluerne hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me þo3te.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Vnder a brood bank by a bourne syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on þe watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
rhymed syllabic verse
(Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls 99-105,
London dialect c. 1380-82)
unrhymed alliterative long lines
(Piers Plowman B.1.1-10;
Northwest Midlands dialect,
near Malvern & Worcester, c. 1370)
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on þe watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on þe watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on þe watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on þe watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on þe watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
Ac on a May morwenynge on Malverne Hilles
[aa/ax]
Me bifel a ferly, of Fairye me thoghte.
[aa/ax]
I was wery forwandred and wente me to reste
[aa/ax]
Under a brood bank by a bournes syde,
[aa/ax]
And as I lay and lenede and loked on the watres
[aa/ax]
I slombred into a slepyng, it sweyed so murye.
[aa/ax]
Oft him an-haga are gebideþ
Metodes mildse þeah-þe he mod-cearig
Geond lagu-lade lange scolde
Hreran mid handum hrim-cealde sæ
Wadan wræc-lastas. Wyrd biþ ful aræd.
Swa cwæþ eard-stapa earfoþa gemyndig
Wraþra wael-sleahta wine-maga hryre.
Oft ic scolde ana uhtna gehwelce
Mine ceare cwiþan nis nu cwicra nan
ðe ic him mod-sefan minne durre
Sweotule asecgan. Ic to soþe wat
ðæt biþ on eorle indryhten þeaw
ðæt he his ferhþ-locan fæste binde
Healde his hord-cofan hycge swa he wille.
(“The Wanderer,” ll. 1-14)
Oft him an-haga are gebideþ
Metodes mildse þeah-þe he mod-cearig
Geond lagu-lade lange scolde
Hreran mid handum hrim-cealde sæ
Wadan wræc-lastas. Wyrd biþ ful aræd.
Swa cwæþ eard-stapa earfoþa gemyndig
Wraþra wael-sleahta wine-maga hryre.
Oft ic scolde ana uhtna gehwelce
Mine ceare cwiþan nis nu cwicra nan
ðe ic him mod-sefan minne durre
Sweotule asecgan. Ic to soþe wat
ðæt biþ on eorle indryhten þeaw
ðæt he his ferhþ-locan fæste binde
Healde his hord-cofan hycge swa he wille.
(“The Wanderer,” ll. 1-14)
Prologues in Chaucer and Langland
Persons and parisshe preestes pleyned hem
to the bisshop
That hire parisshes weren povere sith the
pestilence tyme,
To have a licence and leve at London to
dwelle,
And syngen ther for symonie, for silver is
swete.
Piers Plowman Prol 83-86
He sette nat his benefice to hyre
And leet his sheep encombred in the myre
And ran to Londoun unto Seinte Poules
To seken hym a chaunterie for soules,
Or with a bretherhed to been withholde;
But dwelte at hoom, and kepte wel his folde,
So that the wolf ne made it nat myscarie;
He was a shepherde and noght a
mercenarie.
General Prologue 507-14
And somme chosen chaffare; they cheveden
the bettre—
As it semeth to ours sight that swiche men
thryveth.
Piers Plowman Prol 31-32
This worthy man ful wel his wit bisette:
Ther wiste no wight that he was in dette,
So estatly was he of his governaunce.
General Prologue 279-81
From Canterbury
Cathedral
Pilgrim with a badge-covered hat
From Rome
From St. James, Compostella
From Walsingham
From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)
From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)
THREE-AND-A-HALF VIEWS OF THE TEARING OF THE PARDON
1. In the context of the second vision, the tearing fulfills the Mosaic typology of the
biblical genre that has arisen as Langland's latest experiment in finding an
authoritative mode for his poem.
2. In the context of the poem at large, the tearing arises from the conflict of the priest
and Piers over the pastoral authority to wield such a document (7.107-147.).
3. In the context of the previous passus--of the real world of which Piers is a part--the
tearing results from an insurmountable disjunction between the idealized and
traditional social relations described by the Pardon and the intractable class and
economic conflicts revealed elsewhere in the poem:
a. 7.61-64 vs. 6.302-318, on landless laborers
b. 7.9-12, kings and knights, vs. 6.21-56 (the bargain with Piers) and 6. 159-70 (the knight's failure
to discipline Waster)
c. 7.40-60a, lawyers, vs. 3.13-25, justices and Meed
d. 7.18-39, merchants, vs. 2.213-217, 3.76-92, 5.198-273, esp. 242ff, on the undermining of the
feudal order
3A: Simpson's view, that Piers realizes the harshness of the creed's demands: that one
simply can't do well enough to earn one's salvation. This turns into the theme of the
poem after Will awakes, though right away we can see a problem: Will is looking for
a person, a noun, a personification; the "pardon" contained a verb. Moreover, one
could argue that Piers is confronted here by the same harsh terms he dealt out to the
wasters in the previous passus.
From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)
From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)
From James Simpson, Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London Longman, 1990)
The conflict we read is not that of "characters" but of discourses.... Piers Plowman
is a dialogic poem constructed from the discourses of Langland's day -social,
political, theological, and academic. These are monologic discourses: they exist to
over-determine their readers, over whom they assume a position of authority and
social power. Yet in practice human beings are surrounded bymonologic
discourses that clamor for our attention, yet differ and conflict in the demands they
make. Such discourses are therefore lived and experienced as being dramatically
plural. Will's search is indeed for "a single Truth," but his consciousness is itself
plural and split: necessarily so, for it is constituted by the discourses that divide it.
If truth cannot be seen as single or stable, the seeker cannot be either.
It would be fair to say that the subject of Piers Plowman responds differently in
different discourses, according to the semantic role offered by whichever is the
dominant context at a given time: as dreamer when the conditions of the dreamvision prevail, as prospective penitent when the discourse of penance is strong, as
a scholar in scholarly contexts, and so on. It is not the treatment of a persona we
see primarily here, but the trying on of the different subjectivities that the different
discourses confer-and, finally, the refusal of all.
David Lawton, “The Subject of Piers Plowman,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987): 1-30 (4, 14)
I believe that it would be a mistake to see Langland’s poem as moving from a
failed attempt to reform society, in the Visio, to an acknowledgment, in the Vita,
that this is achieved only through reform of the individual. The poem does not
seem to work with these terms. To adapt some terminology from Marx, it
seems as free from the idealistic illusion (that we can be changed without
radical change to our society) as from the materialistic illusion (that society can
be changed without radical change in us). The poem’s values are collective
throughout: they frustrate our distinction between private ad public, between
personality and “al maner of men.”
David Lawton, “The Subject of Piers Plowman,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987): 1-30 (20-21)
The Opening of the Roman de la Rose
Many men sayn that in sweveninges
Ther nys but fables and lesynges;
But men may some swevenes sen
Whiche hardely that false ne ben
But afterward ben apparaunt.
This may I draw to warraunt
An author that hight Macrobes,
That halt nat dremes false ne lees
But undoth us the avysioun
That whilom mette kyng Cipioun.
And whoso saith or weneth it be
A jape, or elles nycete,
To wene that dremes after falle,
Let whoso lyste a fol me calle.
For this trowe I, and say for me,
That dremes signifiaunce be
Of good and harm to many wightes
That dremen in her slep a-nyghtes
Ful many thynges covertly
That fallen after all openly.
Maintes gens dient que en songes
N'a se fables non et mençonges;
Mes l'en puet tex songes songier
Qui ne sont mie mençongier,
Ains sont aprés apparissant,
Si en puis bien traire a garant
Un actor qui ont non Marcobes,
Qui ne tint pas songes a lobes,
Ainçois escrist la vision
Qui avint au roi Cypion.
Quicunques cuide ne qui die
Que soit folece ou musardie
De croire que songes aviegne,
Qui ce vodra, por fol me tiegne,
Car endroit moi ai je creance
Que songes soit signifiance
Des biens as gens et des anuis;
Car li plusor songent de nuis
Maintes choses couvertement
Qu’il voient puis apertement.
Chaucer[?], Romaunt of the Rose, ll. 1-20
Guillaume de Lorris, Roman de la Rose
The Seven Liberal Arts were divided into the Trivium ("the three
roads") and the Quadrivium ("the four roads").
The Trivium consisted of:
Grammar
Rhetoric
Logic
The Quadrivium consisted of:
Arithmetic
Geometry
Music
Astronomy