Briefly, Piers Plowman is an allegory of life.  In the first vision, that of the “Field Full of Folk,” the poet lies down on the Malvern Hills on a May morning, and a vision comes to him in sleep.  On the plain beneath him gather a multitude of folk, a vast crowd expressing the varied life of the world.  All classes and conditions are there; workingmen are toiling that others may seize all the first fruits of their labor and live high on the proceeds; and the genius of the throng is Lady Bribery, a powerfully drawn figure, expressing the corrupt social life of the times.

The next visions are those of the Seven Deadly Sins, allegorical figures, but powerful as those of Pilgrim’s Progress, making the allegories of the Romaunt of the Rose seem like shadows in comparison.  These all came to Piers asking the way to Truth; but Piers is plowing his half acre and refuses to leave his work and lead them.  He sets them all to honest toil as the best possible remedy for their vices, and preaches the gospel of work as a preparation for salvation.  Throughout the poem Piers bears strong resemblance to John Baptist preaching to the crowds in the wilderness.  The later visions are proclamations of the moral and spiritual life of man.  The poem grows dramatic in its intensity, rising to its highest power in Piers’s triumph over Death.  And then the poet wakes from his vision with the sound of Easter bells ringing in his ears.

Here are a few lines to illustrate the style and language; but the whole poem must be read if one is to understand its crude strength and prophetic spirit: 

    In a somer sesun, whon softe was the sonne,
    I schop[87] me into a shroud, as I a scheep were,
    In habite as an heremite, unholy of werkes,
    Went wyde in this world, wondres to here. 
    Bote in a Mayes mornynge, on Malverne hulles,
    Me byfel a ferly,[88] of fairie me thoughte. 
    I was wery, forwandred, and went me to reste
    Undur a brod banke, bi a bourne[89] side;
    And as I lay and lened, and loked on the watres,
    I slumbred in a slepyng—–­hit swyed[90] so murie....

JOHN WYCLIF (1324?-1384)

Wyclif, as a man, is by far the most powerful English figure of the fourteenth century.  The immense influence of his preaching in the native tongue, and the power of his Lollards to stir the souls of the common folk, are too well known historically to need repetition.  Though a university man and a profound scholar, he sides with Langland, and his interests are with the people rather than with the privileged classes, for whom Chaucer writes.  His great work, which earned him his title of “father of English prose,” is the translation of the Bible.  Wyclif himself translated the gospels, and much more of the New Testament; the rest was finished by his followers, especially by Nicholas of Hereford.  These translations were made from the Latin Vulgate, not from the original Greek and Hebrew, and the whole work was revised in 1388 by John Purvey, a disciple of Wyclif.  It is impossible to overestimate the influence of this work, both on our English prose and on the lives of the English people.