William Langland

William Langland was the author of Piers Plowman, a quintessential example of Middle English alliterative poetry. Langland is believed to have been born around 1330 and have died around 1400. There is uncertainty about his birthdate, but based on contemporary references in the earliest version of Piers Plowman, the earliest plausible date for his birth is around 1325, and the latest is around 1330.

Although the question of whether the three recensions (A, B, and C) of Piers Plowman were written by one or multiple authors was long a point of contention, single authorship is now generally accepted. The author’s name is believed to appear within the text in the first-person narrator’s remark “I have lyved in londe, ... my name is Longe Wille.” Read in reverse order, the emphasized words form the “name” Wille Longe londe, which led to speculation that the author’s name was William Langland. The name William Langland also appears in a Latin memorandum at the end of a C-text manuscript of Piers Plowman that dates to about 1400 and places his father in Oxfordshire. Some scholars suspect that William Langland and a priest named William Rokele were the same person. Rokele was the surname of Langland's father and grandfather, and the Rokeles were well known in the area in which Piers Plowman was set. The verse form of the poem, the alliterative line, and the circular structure are characteristics of the alliterative revival, a literary movement that originated in the northwest of England.

Beyond the details of Piers Plowman, little is known about William Langland. He was probably a cleric, possibly in minor orders and married, and had some higher education and legal background. The setting of Piers Plowman is divided between the western Midlands, near the Malvern Hills, and London, which may reflect the dual nature of the author William Langland's life as connected both to the western Midlands and to London, evident in the wide scope of the poem’s vision of English society from the King's court to the poor.

The dates of composition for the three recensions of Piers Plowman are debated, but it is clear that it is the product of nearly 30 years of labor as the author wrote and revised the poem in a near-constant fashion. The A-text is the earliest and shortest of the three at roughly 2,400 lines long. It is usually dated as completed by 1370. The B-text is an extensive reworking of the A-text: the original 2,400 lines are transformed into 3,200 lines, and more than 4,000 lines of new material were added. The B-text, completed in the 1370s, is often noted as the most poetic of the three versions, and the majority of criticism is based on it.

Though present-day readers may not know much about William Langland as a person, his work remains an enduring and significant piece of Middle English literature that provides insight into medieval theology and Christian doctrine. It also showcases Langland's literary skill and ability to translate complex ideas into accessible language.