William Langland
poet
William Langland was an author of one of the greatest examples of Middle English alliterative poetry, generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegorical work with a complex variety of religious themes. One of the major achievements of Piers Plowman is that it translates the language and conceptions of the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by the layman. In general, the language of the poem is simple and colloquial, but som
Background
William Langland was born in 1332 probably at Cleobury Mortimer in Shropshire.
Connections
William Langland settled down with his wife and daughter in Cornhill, a main thoroughfare near the center of 14th-century London.