The England of 'Piers Plowman': William Langland and His Vision of the Fourteenth Century.

Professor Du Boulay has written an introduction to English social history of the fourteenth century designed to correct basic misconceptions and to rescue the period from its detractors. So the book is not really about Langland, but centres upon him on the grounds that 'his spiritual and poetic power, valued by many of his contemporaries, ought to make despisers of the middle ages think more carefully'. The virtues of the book are infectious enthusiasm and clarity of style, seen at their best in an illuminating justification of the system of indulgences to which the prejudiced undergraduate might usefully be directed.

Like J. J. Jusserand, G. M. Trevelyan, and G. G. …