Abstract
Although Chaucer is considered the fourteenth-century writer who had the most influence on the English poets of the fifteenth century, Langland too shaped the later Middle English poetic tradition through his influence on other writers. Ethan Knapp identifies in Hoccleve’s poetry a number of “elements in which he might be more profitably compared to Langland than Chaucer,” including Hoccleve’s discussions of his marriage, his writing in a voice shaped by a clerical rather than courtly milieu, and his focus on motion.1 Chaucer too may have been influenced by elements of Piers Plowman. Frank Grady has argued that Chaucer’s House of Fame borrows some of its poetic imagery from Piers Plowman, and Jill Mann claims that: “[t]he probability that Chaucer had read both Gower and Langland seems, on the face of it strong.”2 Another argument that Chaucer both read and responded to Piers Plowman is Paul Hardwick’s claim that Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Plowman responds to both Langland’s Piers Plowman and the 1381 rebels’ use of that name; Hardwick contends that Chaucer remakes Langland’s plowman from religious metaphor to a figure for poetic making.3
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Notes
Ethan Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England (University Park: The Pennsylvania State Press, 2001). The quotation is from page 72, n. 62; the thematic parallels Knapp draws between Hoccleve and Langland appear on pages 71, 72, and 135.
Frank Grady, “Chaucer Reading Langland: The House of Fame,” SAC 18 (1996): 3–23. Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 207.
Paul Hardwick, “Chaucer: The Poet as Ploughman,” The Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 146–156.
John N. Bowers, “Piers Plowman and the Police: Notes toward a History of the Wycliffite Langland,” YLS 6 (1992): 24–27.
A concise survey of the different ways that Piers Plowman and Piers Plowman were used in the two centuries after Langland’s composition can be found in Anne Hudson, “Epilogue: The Legacy of Piers Plowman,” in A Companion to “Piers Plowman,” ed. John Alford (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1988), 251–266.
The early fourteenth-century Song of the Husbandman is edited in James M. Dean, Medieval English Political Writings (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1996).
Helen Barr, The Piers Plowman Tradition: A Critical Edition of Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger, and The Crowned King. (London: J. M. Dent, 1993), 8.
The particular works Barr edits as members of the Piers Plowman Tradition are Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede, Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger, and The Crowned King. Winner and Wastour and Parlement of the Three Ages are also alliterative works in the tradition of social satire and complaint. London Lickpenny is similar in spirit, but it is written in rhyming rather than alliterative verse.
James M. Dean, ed., Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), 13.
Elizabeth Kirk, “Langland’s Plowman and the Recreation of Fourteenth- Century Religious Metaphor,” YLS 2 (1988): 1–21.
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Qveene, edited by A. C. Hamilton (London: Pearson Education, 2001), 136; FQ Book I, x.66.3–5.
The original publication of the text is: Luke Shepherd, John Bon and Mast Person (London: J. Day, and W. Seres, [1548]); I quote here from the modern edition printed in A. F. Pollard, An English Garner: Tudor Tracts 1532–1588 (New York: Cooper Square Publishers, Inc, 1964), 161.
John Bon, in Pollard, Garner, 162.
John Bon, in Pollard, Garner, 168.
Michel Foucault, “What Is an Author?” in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977), 123.
This irony is discussed by A. G. Dickens, who summarizes in particular the cluster of anxieties provoked by the Anabaptists; Dickens, The English Reformation, second edition (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1991), 262–263.
A number of scholars have looked at the Protestant use of Lollard materials, including but not limited to the Piers Plowman texts. Important studies include: John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982); Anne Hudson, “ ‘No newe thyng’: The Printing of Medieval Texts in the Early Reformation Period,” in Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday, ed. Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1983), 153–172. I have previously discussed sixteenth-century uses of the Piers Plowman name in “Plowing the Past: ‘Piers Protestant’ and the Authority of Medieval Literary History,” YLS 13 (1999): 101–136.
The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman. . .by William Langland, ed. W. W. Skeat, EETS o.s. 38 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trübner, 1869), 421–426.
J. R. Thorne and Marie-Claire Uhart, “Robert Crowley’s Piers Plowman,” Medium Ævum 55 (1986): 251.
Stephanie Trigg, “Discourses of Affinity in the Reading Communities of Geoffrey Chaucer,” in Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400–1602, ed. Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, 270–291. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999, 283.
John Foxe, The Ecclesiasticall history contaynyng the Actes and Monumentes of thynges passed in euery kynges tyme in this Realme.. ., 2 vols. (London: John Daye, 1570), 1: 494.
Andy Wood, Riot, Rebellion and Popular Politics in Early Modern England (New York: Palgrave, 2002), 82–83.
[Francis Trigge], To the Kings most excellent Maiestie. The Hvmble Petition of Two Sisters; The Church and Common-wealth: For the restoring of their ancient Commons and liberties, which late Inclosure with depopulation vncharitably hath taken away: containing seuen reasons as euidences for the same (London: George Bishop, 1604), fols. A4r–A5v.
Carl James Grindley, “Reading Piers Plowman C-Text Annotations: Notes toward the Classification of Printed and Written Marginalia in Texts from the British Isles, 1300–1641,” in The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, and Gower, ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Maide Hilmo (Victoria, Canada: University of Victoria, 2001), 106. Another of Ayscough’s annotations is dated 1603, so this note is presumably also from the early seventeenth century, and thus roughly contemporary with Trigge’s Humble Petition.
Anne Middleton, “Acts of Vagrancy: The C Version ‘Autobiography’ and the Statute of 1388,” in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, ed. Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 208. The B text of Piers Plowman might not address the issue of vagrant laborers as directly, but an anxiety about the increasing power of individual laborers when there is a labor shortage is evident in the way that the society that Piers constructs in the Visio is destabilized by idle laborers: “ ‘I was not wont to werche,’ quod Wastour, ‘now wol I no3t bigynne!” (B.6.167).
Henry VIII’s Acte for thadvauncement of true Religions and for thabbolisshment of the contrarie of 1542/1543 makes it lawful for “everye noble man and gentleman being a householder to reade or to be red by any of his familye or s[er]vantes. . .the Byble or New Testament,” but “no woomen nor artificers prentises journeymen serving men of the degrees of yeomen or undre, husbandemen nor laborers” could read the Bible under penalty of imprisonment. A special proviso allowed for noblewomen and gentlewomen to read such texts alone and silently. Great Britain, The Statutes of the Realm: Printed by Command of His Majesty King George the Third. . .from Original Records and Authentic Manuscripts, facsimile edition, vol. 3 (London: Dawsons, 1963), 896. In I Playne Piers, Piers says that he could read scripture “Aboute thre yeres paste” (fol. Avir); he also abuses Edward Crome and Nicholas Shaxton for their June 1546 recantation (fols. Eiiv–Eiiir). I Playne Piers therefore seems to date from the second half of 1546.
On the medieval dream vision genre, see J. Stephen Russell, The English Dream Vision: Anatomy of a Form (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1988).
Kathleen Cawsey argues that the narrative and stylistic disjunctions of I Playne Piers indicate that it was compiled from existing texts (many of which were in verse), rather than written together as a whole. Cawsey, “When Polemic Trumps Poetry: Buried Medieval Poem(s) in the Protestant Print I Playne Piers,” in Renaissance Retrospections: Tudor Views of the Middle Ages, ed. Sarah A. Kelen (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, forthcoming).
I Playne Piers, second ed., t. p. The Epistle: [“Martin Marprelate”] Oh read ouer D. Iohn Bridges [East Molesey, UK: R. Waldegrave, 1588], reproduced in The Marprelate Tracts [1588–1589] (Menston, UK: The Scolar Press, Ltd., 1967). The Epitome: [“Martin Marprelate,”] Oh read ouer D. John Bridges/ for it is worthy worke: Or an epitome of the fyrste Booke/ of that right worshipfull volume.. .[Fawsley, UK: R. Waldegrave, 1588], t.p. 87. I Playne Piers, second ed., t. p.; The Epitome, t.p.
The first extended proof of this dating was by Andrew N. Wawn, “The Genesis of The Plowman’s Tale,” Yearbook of English Studies 2 (1972): 21–40. In a subsequent essay, Wawn argues that the author of I Playne Piers knew a manuscript version of The Plowman’s Tale without the Chaucerian Introduction; “Chaucer, The Plowman’s Tale, and Reformation Propaganda: the Testimonies of Thomas Godfray and I Playne Piers,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 56 (1973): 174–192. The Plowman’s Tale had also been printed separately before its appearance among the Canterbury Tales; that edition is STC 5099.5. When I discuss the Plowman’s Tale as one of the Canterbury Tales, I follow the convention of capitalizing but not italicizing tale names, even though this is not an authentic Chaucerian Tale.
Thomas J. Heffernan discusses the way editors’ biases influenced their selection of Chaucer’s works, paying particular attention to the publication history of the Plowman’s Tale. “Aspects of the Chaucerian Apocrypha: Animadversions on William Thynne’s Edition of the Plowman’s Tale,” in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honor of Derek Brewer, ed. Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 155–167.
In the Introduction to her edition of the Plowman’s Tale, Mary Rinelander McCarl notes these and other differences between Chaucer’s Plowman and the Plowman of the spurious Tale; The Plowman’s Tale: The c. 1532 and 1606 Editions of a Spurious Canterbury Tale (New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1997), 33–34.
Thomas Churchyard, Dauy Dycars Dreame (London: R. Lant, [1552?]), single sheet.
John Skelton, Pithy pleasaunt and profitable workes of maister Skelton, Poet Laureate, nowe collected and newly published (London: Thomas Marshe, 1568), fol. Aiiir. 106. Andrew Maunsell, The First Part of the Catalogue of English Printed Bookes: Which concerneth such matters of Diuinitie, as haue bin either written in our owne Tongue, or translated out of anie other language.. .(London: Andrew Maunsell: 1595), 81. Maunsell also notes Owen Rogers’s 1561 edition of Piers Plowman, and I Playne Piers, which he calls “Pieres plowman in prose.” The identity of this work is clear as Maunsell quotes its Conclusion: “God saue the King & spede the plough. . .” (80–81).
A Lytell geste how the plowman lerned his pater noster (London: Wynkyn de Worde, 1510).
T. F., Newes from the North. Otherwise called the Conference Betvveen Simon Certain and Pierce Plowman.. .(London: John Allde, 1579), fol. Biiir.
The Cobler of Caunterburie, Or an Inuectiue against Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie. A merrier Iest then a Clownes Iigge, and fitter for Gentlemens humors (London: Robert Robinson, 1590). The title responds to that of its predecessor: [Robin Goodfellow], Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie, Onely such a iest as his Iigge, fit for Gentlemen to laugh at an houre, &c. Published by an old Companion of his, Robin Goodfellow (London: T. G. and T. N, 1590). The Cobler and Tarltons Newes are edited and discussed in Jane Belfield and Geoffrey Creigh, eds., The Cobler of Caunterburie and Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987).
In its structural imitation of Dante and its borrowings from Boccaccio, The Cobler of Cauterbury follows Tarltons Newes out of Purgatorie. On both of these, see the Introduction to H. Neville Davies, ed. The Cobler of Canterbury: Frederic Ouvry’s Edition of 1862 (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1976), 10–18.
Although later, and seemingly influenced in some of its particulars by Shakespeare’s Puck, the ballad called The mad-merry prankes of Robbin Good-fellow ([London]: H. G[osson?], [1631?]) does attest to Robin’s reputation for trickery.
Edmund Spenser, The Shepheardes Calender, Conteyning tvvelue Æglogues proportionable to the twelue monethes (London: Hugh Singleton, 1579), fol. 52r.
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© 2007 Sarah A. Kelen
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Kelen, S.A. (2007). A Proliferation of Plowmen. In: Langland’s Early Modern Identities. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230608764_3
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