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Updated: June 27, 2025
And in the time of which we have been reading, in the England where Edward III and Richard II ruled, where Langland sadly dreamed and Wyclif boldly wrote and preached, there lived a man who has left for us a clear and truthful picture of those times. He has left a picture so vivid that as we read his words the people of England of the fourteenth century still seem to us to live.
This is true, and to arrive at Bodo's thoughts and feelings and holiday amusements we must bid goodbye to Abbot Irminon's estate book, and peer into some very dark corners indeed; for though by the aid of Chaucer and Langland and a few Court Rolls it is possible to know a great deal about the feelings of a peasant six centuries later, material is scarce in the ninth century, and it is all the more necessary to remember the secret of the invisible ink.
With all the archaism of his diction and metre, Langland, even more than Chaucer, reflects the modernity of his age. Vision of Piers Plowman, i.,220, ed. Skeat. Ibid., i., 222. Even the universities were growing more national, for the war prevented Oxford students from seeking, after their English graduation, a wider career at Paris.
John of Gaunt's rule was not over; Wycliffe was advancing from discontent to revolt; Chaucer was yet to rise for a higher flight; Langland had not yet put his complaint into its permanent form; the French war was renewed almost on the day of Edward's death; popular irritation against bad government, and social and economic repression were still preparing for the revolt of 1381.
Langland knew all about the recital at Prince's Hall; she knew, moreover, as appeared from a casual remark one day, that Mrs. Rolfe had skill in 'landscape painting'. 'Who told you that? asked Alma, with surprise. 'I hope it wasn't a secret. Mrs. Abbott spoke of your water-colours once. She was delighted with them.
Langland, the poet and prophet of social reforms. His chief work is Piers Plowman. Wyclif, the religious reformer, who first translated the gospels into English, and by his translation fixed a common standard of English speech. Mandeville, the alleged traveler, who represents the new English interest in distant lands following the development of foreign trade.
Such was Langland; he married and always remained a poor "clerk." But if Langland did not rise high in the Church, he made himself famous in another way, for he wrote Piers the Ploughman. This is a great book. There is no other written during the fourteenth century, in which we see so clearly the life of the people of the time.
For centuries literature had been busy in pleasing the upper classes chiefly; but here at last was a great poem which appealed directly to the common people, and its success was enormous. The whole poem is traditionally attributed to Langland; but it is now known to be the work of several different writers.
There is Langland, voicing the social discontent, preaching the equality of men and the dignity of labor; Wyclif, greatest of English religious reformers, giving the Gospel to the people in their own tongue, and the freedom of the Gospel in unnumbered tracts and addresses; Gower, the scholar and literary man, criticising this vigorous life and plainly afraid of its consequences; and Mandeville, the traveler, romancing about the wonders to be seen abroad.
Cooper, author of the Muses Library, is of opinion that he preceded Chaucer, and observes that in more places than one that great poet seems to copy Langland; but I am rather inclined to believe that he was cotemporary with him, which accounts for her observation, and my conjecture is strengthened by the consideration of his stile, which is equally unmusical and obsolete with Chaucer's; and tho' Dryden has told us that Chaucer exceeded those who followed him at 50 or 60 years distance, in point of smoothness, yet with great submission to his judgment, I think there is some alteration even in Skelton and Harding, which will appear to the reader to the best advantage by a quotation.
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