William Langland

Poet, probably born in Ledbury, Herefordshire, WC England, UK. Little is known about his life, but he is thought to have been a clerk and a minor cleric who lived many years in London in poverty. He is credited with the authorship of the great mediaeval alliterative poem on the theme of spiritual pilgrimage, Piers Plowman (written over an uncertain period from c.1360). The poem is written in colloquial, simple English, using familiar symbols and images, while reiterating mediaeval Christian doctrine.

William Langland is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman. The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212). The poem itself also seems to point towards Langland's authorship. Although the evidence may appear slender, Langland's authorship has been widely accepted by commentators since the 1920s.

Almost nothing is known of Langland himself. Langland's narrator receives his first vision while sleeping in the Malvern Hills (between Herefordshire and Worcestershire), which suggests some level of attachment to the area. A note written by one 'Iohan but' ('John But') in a fourteenth-century manuscript of the poem (Rawlinson 137) makes direct reference to the death of its author: whan this werke was wrouyt, ere Wille myte aspie/ Deth delt him a dent and drof him to the erthe/ And is closed vnder clom ('once this work was made, before Will was aware/ Death struck him a blow and knocked him to the ground/ And now he is buried under the soil'). Since But himself, according to Edith Rickert, seems to have died in 1387, Langland must have died shortly before this date.

The rest of our knowledge of the poet can only be reconstructed from Piers itself. The C-text of Piers contains a passage in which Will describes himself as a 'loller' living in the Cornhill area of London (perhaps a reference to Lollardy), and refers directly to his wife and child: it also suggests that he was well above average height, and made a living reciting prayers for the dead. This may well indicate that the poet had already reached middle age by the 1370s: but once again suspicions are aroused by the conventional nature of this description (see, for instance, Walter Kennedy's 'In Praise of Aige' and The Parlement of the Thre Ages), and the fact that it occurs towards the end of the poem, when Will's personal development is reaching its logical conclusion.

Further details can be inferred from the poem, but these are also far from unproblematic. For instance, the detailed and highly sophisticated level of religious knowledge in the poem indicates that Langland had some connection to the clergy, but the nature of this relationship is uncertain. The poem shows no obvious bias towards any particular group or order of churchmen, but is rather even-handed in its anticlericalism, attacking the regular and secular clergy indiscriminately. This makes it difficult to align Langland with any specific order.

The tradition that Langland was a Wycliffite, an idea promoted by Robert Crowley's 1550 edition of Piers and complicated by early Lollard appropriation of the Plowman-figure (see, for instance, Pierce the Ploughman's Crede and The Plowman's Tale), is almost certainly incorrect. It is true that Langland and Wyclif shared many concerns: both question the value of indulgences and pilgrimage, promote the use of the vernacular in preaching, attack clerical corruption, and even advocate disendowment. But these topics were widely discussed throughout the late fourteenth century, only becoming typically 'Wycliffite' after Langland's death. Furthermore, as Pamela Gradon observes, at no point does Langland echo Wyclif's characteristic teachings on the sacraments.

For further information, see the article Piers Plowman.