DEFINING WILLIAM LANGLAND’S “PIERS PLOWMAN”

4 mins read

By: Mohammad Mahdi

Hwaet! Great Are the Tails of The Middle Age

How They Broke and Bloodied Their Foes

How They Tamed the Northern Seas

Some Tails Sail, Other Sink

Below the Waves but No Less True…

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Now it is considered by the scholars about the authorship of Piers Plowman is Willielmus de Langland (William Langland). In this essay, we will try to interpret this great masterwork of literature. For explaining why and how the work uses a great number of allegorical elements, we have to know its history a little bit to know it more in-depth.

Piers Plowman was written in the 14th century and is an allegorical poem containing many characters from Christian theology. The poem is said to be written by William Langland. Some scholars suggest the poem is written by getting influenced the Christian theology or it can also be possible that the author was a higher official in a church.

Less history is known about the author and the known history is also said to be uncertain.

By reading the poem and interpreting it, one can easily find the symbolic nature of the poem which is said to be describing a dream within reality. We can also find somewhat influence of the social order of the 14th century on the poem.

“Will” is the main character in the poem. We can take “Will” allegorically also as “Human Desires”. Plowman is the Christ in the poem. Will meats many people (Allegorical) like Reason, Truth, Conscience and many more who guide it. We can also find Piers Plowman defining the nature of three important characters: Do Well, Do Better and Do Best.

In the poem, the will went to sleep many times and after then the progress starts. One can drive meaning from the text and can apply it in real life. When a desire settles in the heart, then only the individual starts to think. Will and desires do not guide us and they themselves are also not guided by rationality. The poet seeks the truth in the poem by telling the readers how Jesus guided us and why it is important to listen to reason not desire, wisdom not foolishness, truth not falsehood. Plowman or Christ in the poem offers to people to plow the half area with him and many people went away leaving only some. But when they started feeling hungry, they came to the Plowman for food. But after eating they again went away from the Plowman.

William Langland’s Piers Plowman tries to draw a line between truth and foolishness. The reader is warned many a time from bad deeds and how the Christian teachings can guide us all towards the right path, towards the truth, toward God.

In the end “Will” sleeps and saw Antichrist, death, and destruction in dreams. In another sense, the poet wants to tell the reader the age in which we are living is full of insanity and one must seek forgiveness from the Lord, and those who will seek will find the truth and will be considered most upright in the eyes of God.

We can draw parallels by reading the allegories and human life. The point of the poet for writing the text in such a way is to make the reader think by creating an imaginative view of senses which are guiding the human soul, us all.

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