DOCSLIB.ORG

The London Life of Yesterday

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The London Life of Yesterday : =£* aammiiwuimiiminmi i i i „ Ml MmIff > F YESTERDAY I III Bill iiiil iiilllilliilil hbl, stx Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2010 with funding from Boston Library Consortium Member Libraries http://www.archive.org/details/londonlifeofyest1909comp THE LONDON LIFE OF YESTERDAY THE LONDON LIFE OF YESTERDAY BY ARTHUR COMPTON-RICKETT M.A., LL.D. AOTHOR OF ' THE VAGABOND IN LITERATURE,' ETC. NEW YORK E. P. DUTTON & CO. 1909 TO MY BEST FRIEND WILLIAM ARTHUR JONES PREFACE In the following pages I have endeavoured to produce a series of clearly defined pictures of certain notable epochs into which London History may be divided. No attempt has been made to trace consecutively or to discuss in detail the political, the social, or the religious life of the various periods dealt with. For such a treatment of the subject the reader may be referred to the scholarly writings of Mr. Loftie and Dr. Sharpe, or to the pleasant pages of Sir Walter Besant's leisurely volumes. What I have tried to essay in this small volume is rather such a presentment of particular epochs as may serve for a background, which the reader can fill in at his leisure from works of a more ambitious and specialized character. A glance at the selection of books dealing with London life given in the Appendix will indicate how rich a literature we possess on the subject, and my obligations to the many who have specialized on certain epochs of its history are necessarily considerable. I have thought it better not to burden the volume with references, save in a few special instances. vii viii LONDON LIFE OF YESTERDAY My cordial thanks are due to Mr. Ernest H. Short for the material assistance he has rendered me through- out the preparation of this volume for the press, and to Mr. Henry C. Barker, LL.B., and to Mr. Arthur Bassett, who are responsible for the Index. Mr. Henry C. Barker also kindly helped with the proof reading. ARTHUR COMPTON-RICKETT. 1 6 Dryburgh Road, Putney, S.W. May 1909. CONTENTS Preface . vii Introduction ...... i CHAPTER I .- London in the Making . .14 CHAPTER II The London of Alfred and Canute . .28 CHAPTER III The London of Fitz-Stephen . • 5P CHAPTER IV The London of Langland and Chaucer . .69 CHAPTER V The London of Whittington and Crosby . .100 CHAPTER VI London and the Renascence . .128 ix x LONDON LIFE OF YESTERDAY CHAPTER VII London and the Reformation . .154 CHAPTER VIII The London of Shakespeare . .180 CHAPTER IX The London of Milton and Cromwell . .212 CHAPTER X The London of Pepys and Wren .... 248 CHAPTER XI The London of Addison and Pope . 286 CHAPTER XII The London of Johnson and Hogarth . .315 CHAPTER XIII The London of Francis Place and Dickens . 343 APPENDIX 387 INDEX . • . • -395 — INTRODUCTION London ... a new land Which foreigners can never understand. Byron. I have seen the greatest wonder which the world can show to the astonished spirit . and still there remains fixed in my memory the stone forest of houses, and amid them the rushing stream of faces of living men with all their motley passions, all their terrible impulses of love, of anger, and of hatred—I mean London. Heine. London : that great sea whose ebb and flow At once is deaf and loud, and on the shore Vomits its wreck and still howls on for more. There is more than a measure or truth in Shelley's picture. Certain it is that none who know London would deny that its treasures must be sought in the depths. From one point of view there is something terrible about London. The friendless immensity, the chill impassivity of the metropolis that jarred on the sensitive imaginations of Shelley and De Quincey, suggest a point of view which strikes many of us painfully in certain moods. None the less it is hard for any Englishman to escape the fascination of " that " great sea —despite its insistent minor. " And yet, on reflection, why " despite ? Does not the magic of London depend largely upon its appeal to the springs of pity and terror within us ? Where there is no mystery there is no magic. Obvious people are the least interesting : and a city which embodied the B — 2 LONDON LIFE OF YESTERDAY spirit of Mark Tapley would not claim our allegiance for long. The songs which pluck at our heart-strings are all of them minor melodies. The primal utterances of the race, the ancient folk-songs, are big with tears. And so it is that the clamorous loneliness, the inscrut- able cruelty of the Great City repels and attracts at one and the same moment. The appeal which London makes is potent also by reason of its complexity. To realise it acutely one must be returning to her as a wanderer from other lands. Then, to us erstwhile aliens, she seems charged with historical associations, personal memories, sorrows, joys, desperations, aspirations, inspirations an electric tide of emotion which tingles through us, as eagerly we gaze at her familiar grey buildings, the sprawling multiplicity of her life. Friendly is she ? Perhaps not. Yet what does it matter ! For tarry and listen we must, like the wedding guest in the ballad, to her never-ending story. Of course we rail at her, scold her, preach at her—and when the earth is carpeted with green and gold and the west wind laden with sweetness, then we leave her vowing maybe never to return. But how many of us who sing bravely of the country life, extolling its spaciousness, tranquillity, simplicity, are content with exile from London when " the woods decay, the woods decay and fall "—and we look at Nature in the stark severity of winter ? When we review the past, the share which our City has played in shaping the artistic life of her great men is realised readily. William Langland was no lover of " London : he is always sighing in his Vision of Piers the Plowman" for the pleasant pastures of Malvern. But none of his pictures are so vivid, so instinct with actuality as those dealing with London haunts, the INTRODUCTION 3 streets of the City, the mixed company of the tavern. In Chaucer's greatest work, The Canterbury Tales, the mediaeval City starts into life—the Church, the Hostel, the Mart, the Law Courts. I have no doubt that he cursed his ill fortune when recalled from the rare charm of the Italy of Petrarch and Giotto, to take up the dull routine of a government officialship at it neither from France nor Italy, Aldgate ; yet was dearly as he loved them, that he was to receive his finest inspiration—but from London and from the manners and mannerisms of his own fellow citizens. Passing by men of lesser stature, the Gowers and Lydgates, and looking at the wonderful flowering of imaginative life in Tudor London, we see again how profound a debt the singers and jesters owe to the City. In the pages of conservative-minded Stow, of the genial, moralising Harrison, of the austere Philip Stubbes, we may find a valuable commentary on the life of the City. But most valuable in its rich vitality is the picture of Tudor London mirrored in the plays of Shakespeare and Ben Jonson ; nor could we afford to dispense with the illuminating sidelights on the life of the day supplied by Dekker, Robert Greene, or Thomas Nash. In the seventeenth century, no chronicler of the Court, no learned historian of the times, can vie with the cynical wit of Dryden, of Congreve and Wycherley, or the naive garrulity of Mr. Pepys, in impressing upon the modern reader the corruption, the artificiality, the picturesque folly of Charles the Second's time ; although it is not to the dramatist but to the poet that we must turn for the deeper springs of contemporary thought. Whatever opinion may be held as to the value of the Puritan ideal in civic and national life, no one will challenge the rare stimulus which Puritanism gave to our 4 LONDON LIFE OF YESTERDAY literature : how it stirred the heart of Milton and fired the muse of Andrew Marvell. Even if we cannot claim Bunyan as a Londoner, yet unquestionably he used the conventions of the City as pigments wherewith to paint his great allegory. Pepys and Evelyn live for us to-day not as Englishmen so much as typical London citizens. Passing to the eighteenth century, the literature inspired by London grows bewildering in its splendid opulence. To that superb journalist Defoe, the Londoner—his ways, his fashions, his ideals— is a source ' ; conflict between the lingering of infinite copy ' the feudalism and the austere puritanism finds perfect expression in the prose of Addison and Steele ; while for other sides of contemporary life, Pope and Gay are invaluable as commentators. Eliminate London from the pages of Richardson and Fielding, and you deprive them of a large measure of their interest. The humour and squalor of Grub Street are epitomized in one man if the —Samuel Johnson ; and, the swirl and fury of human tide of London find imperishable expression in Hogarth, something of the leisured tranquillity of the backwaters is reflected on the gracious canvasses of Sir Joshua Reynolds. But in the nineteenth century, beyond other ages, one may trace the profound and varied inspiration of London Town. A casual reader might imagine that a greater magic lay in the old, ill-lit, quaint-gabled, rough, and barbarous City : that here indeed was stuff for the imagination of artist and poet, while in the London of scientific improvements mystery and fantasy would find it increasingly hard to find an abiding place.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Religious Forms and Institutions in Piers Plowman
    This essay appeared in The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman, edited by Andrew Cole and Andy Galloway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 97-116 Religious Forms and Institutions in Piers Plowman James Simpson KEY WORDS: William Langland, Piers Plowman, selfhood and institutions; late medieval religious institutions ABSTRACT Which comes first: institutions or selves? Liberal democracies operate as if selves preceded institutions. By and large, pre-Reformation culture places the institution before the self. The self, and particularly the conscience as the source of deepest ethical and spiritual counsel, is intimately shaped, by the institution of the Church. This shaping is both ethical and spiritual; by no means least, it ensures the soul’s salvation, though administering the sacraments especially of baptism, penance, and the Eucharist. The conscience is not a lonely entity in such an institutional culture. It is, rather, the portable voice of accumulated, communal history and wisdom: it is, as the word itself suggests, a ‘con-scientia’, a ‘knowing with’. These tensions generate the extraordinary and conflicted account of self and institution in Langland’s Piers Plowman. 1 Religious Forms and Institutions in Piers Plowman Which comes first: institutions or selves? Liberal democracies operate as if selves preceded institutions, since electors choose their institutional representatives, who themselves vote to shape institutions. Liberal ideology, indeed, traces its genealogy back to heroic moments of the lonely, fully-formed conscience standing up against the might of institutions; those heroes (Luther is the most obvious example) are lionized precisely because they are said to have established the grounds of choice: every individual will be able to choose, in freedom, his or her institutional affiliation for him or herself.
    [Show full text]
  • Style: Figuring Subjectivity in 'Piers Plowman C' and 'The Parson's Tale' and 'Retraction': Authorial Insertion and Identity Poetics 04/05/2006 09:03 AM
    Style: Figuring subjectivity in 'Piers Plowman C' and 'The Parson's Tale' and 'Retraction': authorial insertion and identity poetics 04/05/2006 09:03 AM FindArticles > Style > Fall, 1997 > Article > Print friendly Figuring subjectivity in 'Piers Plowman C' and 'The Parson's Tale' and 'Retraction': authorial insertion and identity poetics Daniel F. Pigg For some time, scholars and readers of Chaucer have pondered his knowledge about one of the major poets of his day: William Langland. Readers may typically find statements in scholarly discourse such as "We can now scarcely avoid considering the probability of Chaucer's having actually seen a copy of Piers Plowman in the interval between its first publication (c. 1370) and the beginnings of the Tales at least ten years later" (Bennett 321). Given internal evidence in the fifth passus of the C text - if we are willing to accept any connection between Langland's "autobiographical" confession/apologia and the writer - and documentary evidence of the historical Chaucer, we must assume that each poet was in London for at least a short time. Hypotheses about Chaucer's reading have always been at the forefront of scholarly debate. No one, however, has been about to demonstrate absolutely that Chaucer had knowledge of Piers Plowman. In her closing remarks at the 1994 New Chaucer Society meeting in Dublin, Ireland, Anne Middleton challenged those present to "trouble Chaucer's silences." The present attempt to "trouble the silence" relates to the growth and development of major poetic projects: the C text of Piers Plowman (likely written in the 1380s) and the "final" shape of the Canterbury Tales.
    [Show full text]
  • Dawn of the Reformation Vol 1
    THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION BY HERBERT B. WORKMAN, MA. VOL. I THE AGE OF WYCLIF London: CHARLES H. KELLY 2, CASTLE ST., CITY RD.; AND 26, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C. 1901 OCR and formatting by William H. Gross www.onthewing.org Nov 2016 Page breaks have been adjusted for readability (widow/orphan) PREFACE I HAVE entitled this little work The Dawn of the Reformation. My purpose is to trace the various influences and forces both within and without the Church, which produced the great revolution of the sixteenth century. At what hour" dawn" begins is always a matter of dispute, and depends largely on local circumstances. But one thing is certain. A new day has begun long before the average worker has commenced his toil. So with the Reformation. The study of its causes cannot commence with Erasmus or Savonarola; its methods and results were to some extent settled for it in the century before Luther or Cranmer. My narrow limits have compelled me to omit many things of interest, and to compress into a few lines others which demanded as many pages. viii PREFACE I have constantly realised that to write a small history is more difficult than to write one of larger margins. In what I have included, as well as in what I have omitted, the understanding of the Reformation and its causes has alone had weight. If it be objected that I have given a disproportionate space to Wyclif, or made him bulk larger than he did in his own day, I must plead that his life has scarcely received the attention it deserves.
    [Show full text]
  • Hacettepe University Faculty of Letters Department of English Language and Literature Course Syllabus
    Hacettepe University Faculty of Letters Department of English Language and Literature Course Syllabus Title of the Course IED 151 (03) Introduction to Britain I Year and Term 2017-2018 Autumn Class Hours Mondays – 9.00-12.00 Classroom B8-B03 Office Hours Mondays – 13.30-15.30 & Tuesdays – 9.30-11.30 E-Mail [email protected] / [email protected] I. Course Objective: The aim of the course is to make a survey of Britain and British literature in its historical context. In line with this, the historical evolution of British society and literature from the early ages to the 17th century will be explored through the study of major social, political, and historical developments together with their reflections in the works of literature dating from the mentioned period. II. Course Outline (based on three classes per week): Week I (25 Sep.) General Introduction: Geography, Nationalities (England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland), Ethnic Minorities Week II (02 Oct.) Early Britain - The Social and Cultural History of British Society in the Early Middle Ages: The Celts, the Romans, Asterix in Britain (1986) Week III (9 Oct.) The Saxons, Christianity, Paganism, the Vikings, Vicky the Viking (2009) Week IV (16 Oct.) The Outline of Medieval Literature - Major Literary Works: Beowulf, The Dream of the Rood, The Battle of Maldon Week V (23 Oct.) Midterm I Week VI (30 Oct.) England in the Middle Ages: The Norman Conquest, Feudalism, The Mists of Avalon (2001) Week VII (06 Nov.) The Government, Political Developments (Magna Carta), the Church,
    [Show full text]
  • The Life of the Poet
    The Life of the Poet No one knows who wrote Piers Plowman, and if someone named William Langland did so, no one knows anything certain about him.1 The only evi- dence for that name’s association with the poem comes from three notes that readers penned into the pastedowns (the inside covers) of two me- dieval manuscripts. These short, spontaneous glosses, read together with the few references in the poem to the narrator as “Will,” provide the only grounds for attributing the poem to a named author. The first note, dated ca. 1400, in a manuscript ofPiers Plowman from Gloucestershire but discovered in Ireland (Dublin, Trinity College, MS D.4.1), reads: Memorandum, quod Stacy de Rokayle, pater Willielmi de Langlond, qui Stacius fuit generosus et morabatur in Schiptone under Whic- wode, Tenens domini le Spenser in comitatu Oxon., qui praedic- tus Willielmus fecit librum qui vocatur Perys Ploughman. (Adams, Rokele Family 19) It was Stacy de Rokayle who was William de Langlond’s father; this Stacy was of gentle birth and lived in Shipton-under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire, holding land from Lord le Spenser; the aforesaid Wil- liam wrote the book called Piers Plowman. (Kane, ODNB 488)2 The other notes are found in a manuscript now in the Huntington Library, Hm 128. One, penned by Tudor historian John Bale, offers information similar to that of the Dublin manuscript but gives a different first name for the poet: 2 • An Introduction to Piers Plowman Robertus Langlande natus in comitatu Salopie in villa Mortymers Clybery in the claylande, within .viij.
    [Show full text]
  • Langland, William (C. 1325–C. 1390), Poet | Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
    Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Langland, William (c. 1325–c. 1390) George Kane https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/16021 Published in print: 23 September 2004 Published online: 23 September 2004 Langland, William (c. 1325–c. 1390), poet, is known from only three sources. These are a Latin memorandum of about 1400 on the last leaf of an unfinished copy of his poem The Vision of Piers Plowman made about the same time (TCD, MS D.4.1 (212)), a cluster of sixteenth-century ascriptions by the antiquary John Bale (d. 1563), and the poem itself. Origins Even the memorandum seems primarily about Langland's parentage, as if this were the object of interest: It was Stacy de Rokayle who was William de Langlond's father; this Stacy was of gentle birth and lived in Shipton- under-Wychwood in Oxfordshire, holding land from Lord le Spenser; the aforesaid William wrote the book called Piers Plowman. Dublin, Trinity College, MS D.4.1 (212) The memorandum is authenticated by knowledgeable local annals dated from 1294 to 1348 in the same hand above it on the page, with clear interest in the Despensers. Extension of that interest to include the poet's family is indicated by a recent discovery (Matheson) that his grandfather Peter de Rokele had been in the service of Hugh le Despenser the younger, indeed had several times been violently and unlawfully active in his interest, and that, having in April 1327 been pardoned for 'adhering' to Despenser, he was within months implicated in a conspiracy to release the captive Edward II.
    [Show full text]
  • Piers Plowman, Anthony Trollope, and Charities Law Jill R
    University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository Articles Faculty Scholarship 2009 Nonprofits and Narrative: Piers Plowman, Anthony Trollope, and Charities Law Jill R. Horwitz UCLA School of Law, [email protected] Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/515 Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles Part of the Entertainment, Arts, and Sports Law Commons, Nonprofit Organizations Law Commons, and the Social Welfare Law Commons Recommended Citation Horwitz, Jill R. "Nonprofits nda Narrative: Piers Plowman, Anthony Trollope, and Charities Law." Mich. St. L. Rev. 2009, no. 4 (2009): 989-1016. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected]. NONPROFITS AND NARRATIVE: PIERS PLOWMAN, ANTHONY TROLLOPE, AND CHARITIES LAW Jill Horwitz* 2009 MICH. ST. L. REV. 989 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................... 989 INTRODUCTION ...................................... ....... 990 I. LITERATURE IN NONPROFIT LAW: THE VISION OFPIERS PLO WMAN, THE STATUTE OF ELIZABETH, AND AMERICAN CHARITIES LAW ........ 995 A. The Statute of Elizabeth and Piers Plowman.................... 996 B. English and American Charities Law............. ..... 1000 11. NONPROFIT LAW IN LITERATURE: ST. CROSS HOSPITAL AND THE WARDEN ................................. ..... 1005 A. St. Cross Hospital ......................... ....... 1007 B. The Warden .......................................1009 CONCLUSION ................................................. 1015 ABSTRACT What are the narrative possibilities for understanding nonprofit law? Given the porous barriers between nonprofit law and the literature about it, there are many.
    [Show full text]
  • Bartonlibrarycatalogue SEPT 2016
    ABBEY Anne Merton Kathryn in the Court of Six Queens Date of Publication: 1989 Paperback Synopsis: 1502-47: The daughter of an illegitimate son of Edward IV is a lady-in-waiting to Henry VIII’s wives and discovers the truth about the disappearance of the Princes. ABBEY Margaret Trilogy about Catherine Newberry:- Brothers-in-Arms Date of Publication: 1973 Hardback Synopsis: Catherine seeks revenge on Edward IV, Clarence and Gloucester for the execution of her father after the battle of Tewkesbury The Heart is a Traitor Date of Publication: 1978 Hardback Synopsis: Summer 1483: Catherine’s struggle to reconcile her love for Richard with her love for her husband and family Blood of the Boar Date of Publication: 1979 Hardback Synopsis: Catherine lives through the tragedies and treacheries of 1484-85 ABBEY Margaret The Crowned Boar Date of Publication: 1971 Hardback Synopsis: 1479-83: love story of a knight in the service of the Duke of Gloucester ABBEY Margaret The Son of York Date of Publication: 1972 Paperback Paperback edition of ‘The Crowned Boar’ ABBEY Margaret The Warwick Heiress Date of Publication: 1970 Hardback Date of Publication: 1971 Paperback Synopsis: 1469-71: love story of a groom in the Household of the Duke of Gloucester and a ward of the Earl of Warwick ALLISON-WILLIAMS Jean Cry ‘God for Richard’ Date of Publication: 1981 Hardback Synopsis: 1470-85: Richard’s story told by Francis Lovell and his sister Lady Elinor Lovell, mother of John of Gloucester ALLISON-WILLIAMS Jean Mistress of the Tabard Date of Publication: 1984 Hardback Synopsis: 1471: inn keeper’s daughter , Sir John Crosby’s niece, meets Richard of Gloucester, has an affair with Buckingham and helps find Anne Neville ALMEDINGEN E.M.
    [Show full text]
  • WILLIAM LANGLAND C, 1332
    In habit like a hermit' in his works unholy. And through the wide world I went, wonders to hear. But on a May morning, on Malvern Hills^, A marvel befel me ~ sure from Faery it came - 1 had wandered me weary, so weary, I rested me On a broad bank by a merry-sounding bum; And as I lay and leaned and looked into the waters I slumbered in a sleeping, it rippled so merrily, WILLIAM LANGLAND And I dreamed-marvellously. c, 1332 - c. 1400 All the world's weal, aU the world's woe, Truth and trickery, treason and guile. All I saw sleeping. The identity od the author is one of the most fascinating problems attached to English 1 was in a wilderness, wist I not where. Uteiaty scholarship. From scattered allusions in the many manuscripts, it was assumed for And eastward I looked against the sun. a long time that the poet was William Langland, a native of Shropshire! his father perhaps I saw a Tower on an hill, fairly fadiioned. a freeman land-holder or franklin; and he himself later a cleric in the Benedictine convent Beneath it a Dell, and in the Dell a dungeon, , of Malvern. Subsequently he came to London and led a vagabondish life through the rest With deep ditches and dark and dreadful to see, of his days. He was assumed to have a learning of a sort, but he owed it more to wit than And Death and wicked ^irits dwelt therein. to application. Possibly he took minor orders in the Church.
    [Show full text]
  • In William Langland's Piers Plowman and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales
    BETWEEN “ERNEST” AND “GAME”: THE AESTHETICS OF KNOWING AND POETICS OF “WITTE” IN WILLIAM LANGLAND'S PIERS PLOWMAN AND GEOFFREY CHAUCER’S CANTERBURY TALES by SHARITY D. NELSON A DISSERTATION Presented to the Department of English and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2013 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Sharity D. Nelson Title: Between “Ernest” and “Game”: The Aesthetics of Knowing and Poetics of “Witte” in William Langland's Piers Plowman and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Department of English by: Warren Ginsberg Chair Anne Laskaya Core Member Louise M. Bishop Core Member Kenneth Calhoon Institutional Representative and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research and Innovation; Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded in September 2013 ii © 2013 Sharity D. Nelson iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Sharity D. Nelson Doctor of Philosophy Department of English September 2013 Title: Between “Ernest” and “Game”: The Aesthetics of Knowing and Poetics of “Witte” in William Langland's Piers Plowman and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales A common assumption in theories of the aesthetic is that it is a concept and experience that belongs to modernity. However, as Umberto Eco has shown, the aesthetic was a topic of great consideration by medieval thinkers. As this project demonstrates in the study of the poetry of William Langland and Geoffrey Chaucer, the aesthetic was, in fact, a dynamic and complex concept in the Middle Ages that could affirm institutional ideologies even as it challenged them and suggested alternative perspectives for comprehending truth.
    [Show full text]
  • William Langland - Poems
    Classic Poetry Series William Langland - poems - Publication Date: 2004 Publisher: Poemhunter.com - The World's Poetry Archive William Langland(1330 - 1390) William Langland was born in 1332, probably at Ledbury near the Welsh marshes and may have gone to school at Great Malvern Priory. Although he took minor orders he never actually became a priest. Having later moved to London he apparently eked out his living by singing masses and copying documents. His great work, Piers Plowman, or, more precisely, The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman, is an allegorical poem in unrhymed alliterative verse, regarded as the greatest Middle English poem prior to Chaucer. It is both a social satire and a vision of the simple Christian life. The poem consists of three dream visions: (1) in which Holy Church and Lady Meed (representing the temptation of riches) woo the dreamer; (2) in which Piers leads a crowd of penitents in search of St. Truth; and (3) the vision of Do-well (the practice of the virtues), Do-bet (in which Piers becomes the Good Samaritan practicing charity), and Do-best (in which the simple plowman is identified with Christ himself). The 47 extant manuscripts of the poem fall into three groups: the A-text (2,567 lines, c.1362); the B-text, which greatly expands the third vision (7,242 lines, c.1376–77); the C-text, a revision of B (7,357 lines, between 1393 and 1398). Most scholars now believe that at least the A- and B-texts are the work of William Langland, whose biography has been deduced from passages in the poem.
    [Show full text]
  • MODULE 15 LANGLAND Dr Kalyani Dixit GENERAL INTRODUCTION
    MODULE 15 LANGLAND Dr Kalyani Dixit GENERAL INTRODUCTION This module will discuss a brief life history of William Langland. The module discusses the works of Langland. There is a long segment on his most famous work Piers Plowman in this module. Piers Plowman came out in three texts: A- text, B- text and C- text. It will also discuss the language, dialects, and meter used by him. Influence of French and Latin classics reflects into his writings. It will also discuss the alliterative meter used by him. The language used by Langland is different from contemporary English that is why some of the examples have been quoted in modern English for the convenience of the reader. William Langland or Langley was a famous poet of fourteenth century. But the critics are not sure about the date of his birth and death. As per Legouis and Cazamian he was born “in Shropshire about 1330, that is six years after Wyclif and ten before Chaucer.”(pg.114) J. M. D. Meiklejohn writes that “This English poet, according to Bishop Bale, was born about the year 1332 at Cleobury Mortimer, in the country of Shropshire, not far from the borders of Wales.”(pg.16). Eminent historian of English Literature William J. Long is also doubtful ,he writes : “Very little is known of Langland he was born probably near Malvern , in Worcestershire , the son of a poor freeman and in his early life lived in the fields as a shepherd.”(pg.81) We get very little information about his life and his appearance from his own works.
    [Show full text]