UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER DR D’ARCY

ND
EN 240 MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 2 YEAR

William Langland’s Piers Plowman

Students are expected to be familiar with the text and notes to the Prologue and Passus I-VII in The Vision of Piers Plowman: A
Critical Edition of the B-Text, ed. A. V. C. Schmidt, 2nd ed. (London, 1987). Students are encouraged to consult some of the
following studies.

Aers, D. Piers Plowman and Christian Allegory (London, 1975).

Aers, D. Chaucer, Langland and the Creative Imagination (London, 1980).
Alford, J. A. ‘The Role of the Quotations in Piers Plowman’, Spec 52 (1977), 80-99.
Alford, J. A. (ed.) A Companion to Piers Plowman (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1988).
Baldwin, A. P. The Theme of Government in Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1981).
Barr, H. Signes and Sothe: Language in the Piers Plowman Tradition (Cambridge, 1994).
Bennett, J. A. W. ‘The Date of the B-Text of Piers Plowman’, MÆ 12 (1943), 55-64.
Blanch, R. J. (ed.) Style and Symbolism in Piers Plowman: A Modern Critical Anthology (Knoxville, 1969).
Bloomfield, M. W. Piers Plowman as a Fourteenth-Century Apocalypse (New Brunswick, NJ, 1961).
Bowers, J. M. The Crisis of Will in Piers Plowman (Washington, 1986).
Burrow, J. A. ‘The Action of Langland’s Second Vision’, EC 15 (1965), 247-68.
Burrow, J. A. Langland’s Fictions (Oxford, 1993).
Carruthers, M. The Search for St. Truth: A Study of Meaning in Piers Plowman (Evanston, 1973).
Coleman, J. Piers Plowman and the Moderni (Rome, 1981).
Du Boulay, F. R. H. The England of Piers Plowman: William Langland and his Vision of the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge,
1991).
Dunning, T. P. ‘The Structure of the B-Text of Piers Plowman’, RES n. s.7 (1956), 225-37.
Finke, L. A. ‘Truth’s Treasure: Allegory and Meaning in Piers Plowman’, in Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, ed. L.
A. Finke and M. B. Shichtman (Ithaca and London, 1987), pp. 51-68.
Fowler, E. ‘Civil Death and the Maiden: Agency and the Conditions of Contract in Piers Plowman’, Spec 70 (1995), 760-92.
Frank, R. W. ‘The Art of Reading Medieval Personification-Allegory’, ELH 20 (1953), 237-50.
Frank, R. W. ‘The Pardon Scene in Piers Plowman’, Spec 26 (1951), 317-31.
Godden, M. The Making of Piers Plowman (London, 1990).
Goldsmith, M. E. The Figure of Piers Plowman: The Image on the Coin (Cambridge, 1981).
Griffiths, L. Personification in Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1985).
Harwood, B. J. Piers Plowman and the Problem of Belief (Toronto, 1992).
Huppé, B. F. ‘The Date of the B-Text of Piers Plowman’, SP 38 (1941), 36-44.
Johnson, B. A. Reading Piers Plowman and the Pilgrim’s Progress: Reception and the Protestant Reader (Carbondale, IL,
1992).
Justice, S. Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381 (Berkeley and London, 1994).
Kane, G. Piers Plowman: The Evidence for Authorship (London, 1965).
Kirk, E. D. The Dream Thought of ‘Piers Plowman’ (New Haven and London, 1972).
Knight, S. T. ‘Satire in Piers Plowman’, in Piers Plowman: Critical Approaches, ed. S. S.Hussey (London, 1969), pp. 279-309.
Lawlor, J. Piers Plowman: As Essay in Criticism (London, 1962).
Martin, P. Piers Plowman: The Field and the Tower (London and New York, 1979).
Mills, D. ‘The Role of the Dreamer in Piers Plowman’, in Piers Plowman: Critical Approaches, ed. S. S. Hussey (London, 1969),
pp. 180-212.
Mitchell, A. G. Lady Meed and the Art of ‘Piers Plowman’ (London, 1970).
Murtaugh, D. M. Piers Plowman and the Image of God (Gainesville, 1978).
Muscatine, C. Poetry and Crisis in the Age of Chaucer (Notre Dame, 1972).
Norton-Smith, J. William Langland (Leiden, 1983).
Robertson D. W. Jr. and Huppé, B. F. Piers Plowman and Scriptural Tradition (Princeton, 1951).
Salter, E. Piers Plowman: An Introduction (Oxford, 1962).
Schmidt, A. V. C. ‘The Inner Dreams in Piers Plowman’, MÆ 55 (1986), 24-40.
Schmidt, A. V. C. The Clerkly Maker: Langland’s Poetic Art (Cambridge, 1987).
Schroeder, M. C. ‘Piers Plowman: The Tearing of the Pardon’, PQ 49 (1970), 8-18.
Simpson, J. ‘From Reason to Affective Knowledge: Modes of Thought and Poetic Form in Piers Plowman’, MÆ 55 (1986), 1-23.
Simpson, J. Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text (London, 1990).
Smith, B. H. Traditional Imagery of Charity in Piers Plowman (The Hague, 1966).
Stokes, M. Justice and Mercy in Piers Plowman: A Reading of the B Text Visio (London, 1984).
Tavormina, M. T. Kindly Similitude: Marriage and Family in Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1995).
Vasta, E. The Spiritual Basis of Piers Plowman (The Hague, 1965).
Vasta, E. (ed.) Interpretations of Piers Plowman (Notre Dame and London, 1968).
White, H. Nature and Salvation in Piers Plowman (Cambridge, 1988).

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UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER DR D’ARCY
ND
EN 240 MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 2 YEAR

Woolf, R. ‘Some Un-medieval Qualities of Piers Plowman’, EC 12 (1962), 111-25.

Woolf, R. ‘The Tearing of the Pardon’, in Piers Plowman: Critical Approaches, ed. S. S. Hussey (London, 1969), pp. 180-212.

Holy Church
Sources and Analogues
S
apientia in Proverbs 1: 20-33; 8: 1-35; 9: 1-6, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 14: 20-15: 8; 24: 1-34, Wisdom (the Wisdom of
Solomon) 7: 22-33; 8: 2-16. English texts: Douay-Challoner translation of the Vulgate, but references cited according
to Hebrew chapter and verse as above.

E
cclesia in The Shepherd of Hermas, I. ii - III. xiii, The Apostolic Fathers, ed. and trans. K. Lake, Loeb, 2 vols.
(London and New York, 1912-13), II, 11-59.

S
apientia in Prudentius, Psychomachia, 875-87, Prudentius, ed. and trans. H. J. Thomson, Loeb, 2 vols. (London and
Cambridge, MA, 1949-53), I, 336-43.

P
hilosophia in Boethius, De consolatione philosophiae, 1, pr. 1, The Theological Tractates and the Consolation of
Philosophy, edd. and trans. H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, Loeb (London and Cambridge, MA, 1973), pp.
134-5.

Lady Meed
Sources and Analogues
Lady Folly in Proverbs 1: 15-18; 2: 7-22; 3: 31-2; 4: 14-19, 25-7; 5: 2-6; 7: 6-27; 10: 17; 12: 26-8; 13: 20-1; 14: 8, 12;
15: 9-10, 19; 16: 25, 29; 21: 16; 28: 6-18. See in particular the invitation to her fools’ banquet and its association with
covetous theft in Proverbs 9: 13-18:

M
ulier stulta et clamosa plenaque inlecebris et nihil omnino sciens | sedit in foribus domus suae super sellam in excelso
urbis loco | ut vocaret transeuntes viam, et pergentes itinere suo | quis est parvulus declinet ad me et vecordi locuta est
| aquae furtivae dulciores sunt et parnis absconditus suavior | et ignoravit quod gigantes ibi sunt et in profundis inferni
convivae eius

A
foolish woman and clamorous, and full of allurements, and knowing nothing at all, sat at the door of her house, upon a
seat, in a high place of the city, to call them that pass by the way, and go on their journey: he that is a little one, let
him turn to me. And to the fool she said: stolen waters are sweeter, and hidden bread is more pleasant. And he did
not know that the giants are there, and that her guests are in the depths of hell.

The Great Harlot in Revelations 17: 1-6.

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UNIVERSITY OF LEICESTER DR D’ARCY
ND
EN 240 MEDIEVAL LITERATURE 2 YEAR

V
eni ostendam tibi damnationem | meretricis magnae quae sedet super aquas multas | cum qua fornicati sunt reges terrae
et inebriati sunt qui inhabitant terram de vino prostitutionis eius | et abstulit me in desertum in spiritu | et vidi
mulierem sedentem super bestiam coccineam plenam nominibus blasphemiae | habentem capita septem et cornua
decem | et mulier erat circumdata purpura et coccino | et inaurata auro et lapide pretioso et margaritis | habens
poculum aureum in manu sua plenum abominationum et inmunditia fornicationis eius | et in fronte eius nomen
scriptum mysterium | Babylon magna mater fornicationum et abominationum terrae | et vidi mulierem ebriam de
sanguine sanctorum et de sanguine martyrum Iesu | et miratus sum cum vidissem illam admiratione magna

C
ome, I will shew thee the condemnation of the great harlot, who sitteth upon many waters, with whom the kings of the
earth have committed fornication; and they who inhabit the earth, have been made drunk with the wine of her
whoredom. And he took me away in spirit into the desert. And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast,
full of the names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was clothed round about with
purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold, and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the
abomination and filthiness of her fornication. And on her forehead a name was written: A mystery; Babylon the great,
the mother of fornications, and the abominations of the earth. And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the
saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And I wondered, when I had seen her, with great admiration.