William Langland - Visions From Piers Plowman flac album

Piers Plowman (written c. 1370–90) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is 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 Plowman is not merely longer, though - it is, despite Langland being contemporary with Chaucer, fundamentally more difficult because the dialect is not Chaucer's. The London dialect went on to become the dominant one in the development from Middle to Modern English and is therefore somewhat easier for the modern reader.

The earliest publishers of Piers Plowman assumed that there was one version of the poem. The A-text is the earliest and shortest of the three versions, being roughly 2,400 lines long. He also had some legal background. Piers Plowman was the lifework of Langland as a writer. No other text can be attributed to him. The geography and verse form can also tell the reader something about the historical Langland. He was a writer who belonged both to the western Midlands, situated near the Malvern Hills where the poem begins, and to the city of London.

William Langland's great Middle English poem from the 14th century comprises eight "visions," themselves divided 20 total passūs (Latin for "steps," which act as chapters). Piers Plowman exists in at least three versions. The A text, dating from about 1362, contains a prologue and eleven passi, or cantos. The Latin word passus means step or stage of a journey and is both singular and plural. About a decade later William Langland expanded the work from 2,400 lines to 7,277, arranged in a prologue and twenty passi. This expanded B text, dating from about 1377, is regarded as the most authoritative.

Abstract Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman (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". 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.

William Langland's Piers Plowman: the C version: a verse translation. tr. George Economou, Philadelphia, The Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.

William Langland, Piers Plowman. Are you up for a challenge? We're not going to kid you: Piers Plowman is considered one of the most challenging pieces of English literature from the Medieval Period. It's a dream vision that follows the poem's unnamed narrator Piers guides him through a series of visions (called passus, which is Latin for "steps").

FREE shipping on qualifying offers. Written by a fourteenth-century cleric, this spiritual allegory explores man in relation to his ultimate destiny against the background of teeming.