Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman (written c. 1370–86; possibly c. 1377) or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman (William's Vision of Piers Plowman) is a Middle Englishallegoricalnarrative poem by William Langland. It is written in unrhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections called (Latin for "step").

Like the Pearl Poet's Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman is considered by many critics to be one of the greatest works of English literature of the Middle Ages, preceding and even influencing Chaucer'sCanterbury Tales. Piers Plowman contains the first known reference to a literary tradition of Robin Hood tales.

Three distinct versions of the poem exist, which scholars refer to as the A-, B-, and C-texts. The B-text is the most widely edited and translated version; it revises and extends the A-text by over 4000 lines.

Also, a Z-text of Piers Plowman, discovered in the 1980s, is composed of elements from the A and C versions. The Z-text is not distinctly authorial (critics have suggested it may be of scribal production), thus its authorship is greatly contested.