Piers Plowman

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 is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest works of English literature of the Middle Ages, along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Piers Plowman contains the first known allusion to a literary tradition of Robin Hood tales.

Summary

The poem—part theological allegory, part social satire—concerns the narrator's intense quest for the true Christian life, from the perspective of medieval Catholicism. This quest entails a series of dream-visions and an examination into the lives of three allegorical characters, Dowel ("Do-Well"), Dobet ("Do-Better"), and Dobest ("Do-Best"). The following summary is based on the B-version of the poem--the most widely edited and translated.