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

F. R. H. Du Boulay's object in The England of Piers Plowman: William Langland and His Vision of the Fourteenth Century (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991; pp. 147. [pounds]29.50) is not so much to present a picture in the round of England in the age of Piers Plowman, as to introduce England and English society as William Langland, author of the poem, perceived them. Langland, as we know him through his poem (and there is precious little else to tell us of him) was not an easy man: meditative and introverted, passionate and prejudiced, often perplexed. To attempt an historical introduction that does justice to the poem's author and his vision is thus no easy task: Professor Du Boulay has executed it superlatively well. Langland's poem was a life work, repeatedly revised, expanded and …