Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman (written ca. 1360–1387) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is the title of a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (Latin for "step").

Piers is considered by many critics to be one of the early great works of English literature along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight during the Middle Ages.



It is commonly accepted that Piers Plowman was written by William Langland, about whom little is known. This attribution of the poem to Langland rests principally on the evidence of an early-fifteenth-century manuscript of the C-text (see below) of Piers held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212), which ascribes the work to one 'Willielmus de Langlond'.

However a new theory about the authorship has been put forward. That the author of Piers Plowman was actually the Bishop of Exeter in Devon - by the name of John Grandisson (1328-1369). John Grandisson also founded The Kings School in a town not far from Exeter called Ottery St Mary.