  piers plowman (written  1370&ndash;90) or visio willelmi de piers plowman (william's vision of piers plowman) is a middle english allegorical narrative poem by william langland. it is written in unrhymed alliterative verse divided into sections called "passus" (latin for "step"). piers is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest works of english literature of the middle ages, along with chaucer's canterbury tales and the pearl poet's sir gawain and the green knight. ==summary== the poemâpart theological allegory, part social satireâconcerns the narrator's intense quest for the true christian life, from the perspective of medieval catholicism. this quest entails a series of dream-visions and an examination into the lives of three allegorical characters, dowel ("do-well"), dobet ("do-better"), and dobest ("do-best"). the poem begins in the malvern hills between worcestershire and herefordshire. a man named will falls asleep and has a vision of a tower set upon a hill and a fortress (donjon) in a deep valley; between these symbols of heaven and hell is a "fair field full of folk", representing the world of mankind. in the early part of the poem piers, the humble plowman of the title, appears and offers himself as the narrator's guide to truth. the latter part of the work, however, is concerned with the narrator's search for dowel, dobet and dobest. ==title and authorship== it is now commonly accepted that piers plowman was written by william langland, about whom little is known. this attribution rests principally on the evidence of an early-fifteenth-century manuscript of the c-text (see below) of piers held at trinity college, dublin (ms 212), which ascribes the work to one man called, 'willielmus de langlond':  ;translation  other manuscripts also name the author as "robert or william langland", or "wilhelmus w." (which could be shorthand for "william of wychwood"). the attribution to william langland is also based on internal evid
14th-century_poems Christian_fiction_and_allegory Middle_English_poems Narrative_poems Visionary_poems