Theme:
Langland's theme is nothing less than the history of Christianity as it
unfolds both in the world of the Old and new Testaments and in the life
and heart of an individual fourteenth-century Christian--two seemingly distinct
realms between which the poet's allegory moves with dizzying rapidity. The
poet describes fourteenth-century English society in terms of its failure
to represent an ideal society living in accord with Christian principles:
Society's failure is attributable in part to the corruption of
the church and ecclesiastics, and whenever he considers clerical corruption,
he pours our savagely indignant satire. The failure of the wealthy laity--untaught
by the church to practice charity--to alleviate the sufferings of the poor.
Piers Plowman
was widely read from the end of the fourteenth century to the reign of Elizabeth
I. The leaders of the Peasant's Revolt of 1381 used phrases borrowed from
it as part of the rhetoric of the rebellion. Langland's sympathy
with the sufferings of the poor and his indignant satire of official
corruption undoubtedly made his poem popular with the rebels, although
he himself, despite his interest in social reform, remained a fundamentally
conservative and orthodox thinker. The passionate sympathy
for the commoner, idealized in the work, also appealed to reformers who
felt that true religion was best represented not by the ecclesiastical hierarchy
but by the humblest orders of society. Piers Plowman-- a prophecy
and forerunner of the English Reformation
Juxtaposition
of vision and actuality--the visions themselves present actuality as much
as they embody speculation and theological mysteries. In poetry only Chaucer
approaches this manifestation of a daily interweaving of the humdrum, or
the sordid, and the sublime.
(external) 
English
Literature I: the Medieval Period;English
Literature and Culture
From Medieval Period to the Eighteenth Century