Almost exactly contemporary with Chaucer were two others poets, both of more than ordinary mark- one of than Chaucer's own equal, if not superior, in intensity, though far his inferior in range and in art, both curious contrasts in more ways than one with him, and with each other.The first was the author of the Vision of Piers the Plowman; the second was John Gower. 
WILLIAM LANGLAND, the generally accepted author of the Medieval
allegorical poem Piers Plowman, is a figure of whom there is no mention
in contemporary records. Everything written about his life is educated
conjecture based on Langland's texts and later allusions.
Langland was born sometime around 1330. In the B-Text of Piers Plowman, composed around 1377, Imagination says he has followed him "this five and forty winters." In the Dublin manuscript (D.4.1), a note in a fifteenth-century hand claims that Langland's father was one "Stacy de Rokayle." In mid-sixteenth century, Bale in his Illustris Majoris Britanniae wrote that Langland was from "Mortymers Clibury" (now Cleobury Mortimer) in Shropshire near the Malvern Hills where Piers Plowman opens. There was a hamlet named "Langley" nearby, which may explain his last name.1
The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212). This directly ascribes 'Perys Ploughman' to one 'Willielmi de Langlond', son of 'Stacy de Rokayle, who died in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire'. Other manuscripts also name the author as 'Robert or William langland', or 'Wilhelmus W.' (most likely shorthand for 'William of Wychwood'). The poem itself also seems to point towards Langland's authorship. At one stage the narrator remarks: 'I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille' (B.XV.152). This can be taken as a coded reference to the poet's name, in the style of much late-medieval literature (see, for instance, Villon's acrostics in Le Testament). Although the evidence may appear slender, Langland's authorship has been widely accepted by commentators since the 1920s. It is not, however, entirely beyond dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson has demonstrated.
Nevertheless he had a great literary talent, which perhaps amounted to genius. The literary craftsmanship which succeeds in impressing on a form so uncouth as the unrhymed and only faintly metred alliterative verse the combination of freedom and order, of swing and variety, which marks Piers Plowman, is of that kind which must distinguished itself whatsoever the form it happened to adopt. And although the architectonic gift, which might have enabled the poet to to present a real whole instead of a series of dissolving views, ,is not present, yet it is astonishing with how little repugnance the reader who has once ''got his hand in'' accepts this apparent incoherence, and resigns himself to see the visions rise and gleam and melt, the bubbles swell and gleam and break. While as for the force of individual passages-the prologue, the fable, the best court scenes, the London Tavern, the Harrowing of Hell- these have never been mistaken by any competent critic who has read them.
WILLIAM LANGLAND, the generally accepted author of the Medieval
allegorical poem Piers Plowman, is a figure of whom there is no mention
in contemporary records. Everything written about his life is educated
conjecture based on Langland's texts and later allusions. Langland was born sometime around 1330. In the B-Text of Piers Plowman, composed around 1377, Imagination says he has followed him "this five and forty winters." In the Dublin manuscript (D.4.1), a note in a fifteenth-century hand claims that Langland's father was one "Stacy de Rokayle." In mid-sixteenth century, Bale in his Illustris Majoris Britanniae wrote that Langland was from "Mortymers Clibury" (now Cleobury Mortimer) in Shropshire near the Malvern Hills where Piers Plowman opens. There was a hamlet named "Langley" nearby, which may explain his last name.1
The attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212). This directly ascribes 'Perys Ploughman' to one 'Willielmi de Langlond', son of 'Stacy de Rokayle, who died in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire'. Other manuscripts also name the author as 'Robert or William langland', or 'Wilhelmus W.' (most likely shorthand for 'William of Wychwood'). The poem itself also seems to point towards Langland's authorship. At one stage the narrator remarks: 'I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille' (B.XV.152). This can be taken as a coded reference to the poet's name, in the style of much late-medieval literature (see, for instance, Villon's acrostics in Le Testament). Although the evidence may appear slender, Langland's authorship has been widely accepted by commentators since the 1920s. It is not, however, entirely beyond dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson has demonstrated.
Nevertheless he had a great literary talent, which perhaps amounted to genius. The literary craftsmanship which succeeds in impressing on a form so uncouth as the unrhymed and only faintly metred alliterative verse the combination of freedom and order, of swing and variety, which marks Piers Plowman, is of that kind which must distinguished itself whatsoever the form it happened to adopt. And although the architectonic gift, which might have enabled the poet to to present a real whole instead of a series of dissolving views, ,is not present, yet it is astonishing with how little repugnance the reader who has once ''got his hand in'' accepts this apparent incoherence, and resigns himself to see the visions rise and gleam and melt, the bubbles swell and gleam and break. While as for the force of individual passages-the prologue, the fable, the best court scenes, the London Tavern, the Harrowing of Hell- these have never been mistaken by any competent critic who has read them.
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