CÆDMON AND CYNEWULF

Cædmon, (flourished 670), entered the monastery of Streaneshalch (Whitby) between 658 and 680, when he was an elderly man. According to Bede he was an unlearned herdsman who received suddenly, in a vision, the power of song, and later put into English verses passages translated to him from the Scriptures. Bede tells us that Caedmon turned into English the story of Genesis and Exodus. The name Caedmon has been conjectured to be Celtic. The poems assumed to be Caedmon poems Caedmon are: Genesis, Exodus, Daniel, and Christ and Satan. But critical research has proved the ascription to be impossible. Perhaps the Caedmon songs were used by later singers and left their spirit in the poems that remains; but of the originals described by Bede we have no trace. The only work which can be attributed to him is the short "Hymn of Creation," quoted by Bede himself. This is all we possess of the first known English poet. It survives in several manuscripts of Bede in various dialects.

Cynewulf:Cynewulf (late 8th or 9th century) was identified, not certainly, but probably, with a Cynewulf who was Bishop of Lindisfarne and lived in the middle of the eighth century. He was a wandering singer or poet who lived a gay and secular life. The accuracy of some of his battle scenes and seascapes showed that he had fought on land and sailed the seas. Finally, after a dream in which he had a vision of the Holy Rood, he changed his life, became a religious poet, sang of Christ, the apostles, and the saints. His work represents an advance in culture upon the more primitive Caedmonian poems. The poems attributed to him are: Juliana, Elene, The Fates of the Apostles, and Christ II.

CAEDMON'S HYMNThe following nine lines are all of what survives that can reasonably be attributed to him. Bede quotes them in Chapter 24 of his History. Bede adds that these lines are only the general sense, not the actual words that Caedmon sang in his dream. Caedmon's gift remained an oral one and was devoted to sacred subjects."Now must we praise" Now must we praise of heaven's kingdom the KeeperOf the Lord the power and his WisdomThe work of the Glory-Father, as he of marvels each,The eternal Lord, the beginning established.

He first created of earth for the sons 5Heaven as a roof, the holy Creator.Then the middle-enclosure of mankind the ProtectorThe eternal Lord, thereafter madeFor men, earth the Lord almighty.

Cynewulf

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaediaCynewulf is one of twelve[citation needed] Anglo-Saxon poets known by name, and one of four whose work survives today. He presumably flourished in the 9 th century, with possible dates extending into the late 8th and early 10th centuries.

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He is famous for his religious compositions, and is regarded as one of the pre-eminent figures of Christian Old English poetry. Posterity knows of his name by means of runic signatures that are interwoven into the four poems which comprise his scholastically recognized corpus. These poems are: The Fates of the Apostles, Juliana, Elene, and Christ II (also referred to as The Ascension).

The four signed poems of Cynewulf are vast in that they collectively comprise several thousand lines of verse. In comparison, the one work attributed to Caedmon, Caedmon's Hymn, is quite succinct at nine lines.

LifeDialectSome basic statements can be made by examining such aspects as the spellings of his name and his verse.[1] Although the Vercelli and Exeter manuscripts were primarily late West Saxon in their scribal translations, it is most probable that Cynewulf wrote in the Anglian dialect and it follows that he resided either in the province of Northumbria or Mercia.

This is shown through linguistic and metrical analysis of his poems, i.e. Elene, where in the poem’s epilogue (beginning l.1236) the “imperfect rhymes” become corrected when Anglian forms of the words are substituted for the West Saxon forms. For instance, the manuscript presents the miht:peaht false rhyme which can be corrected when the middle vowel sounds of both words are replaced with an æ sound. [2] The new maeht:paeht rhyme shows a typical Anglian smoothing of the ea. Numerous other “Anglianisms” in Elene and Juliana have been taken to be indicative of an original Anglian dialect underlying the West Saxon translation of the texts.[3] Any definite conclusion to Cynewulf being either Northumbrian or Mercian has been hard to come by, but linguistic evidence suggests that the medial e in the signed Cynewulf would have, during the broad window period of Cynewulf’s existence, been characteristic of a Mercian dialect.[4]

DateAll the evidence considered, no exact deduction of Cynewulf’s date is accepted, but it is likely he flourished in the ninth century.

A firm terminus ante quem that can be put on the date of Cynewulf are the dates of the Vercelli and Exeter manuscripts, which are approximately in the second half of the tenth century. Other than that, no certain date can be put on the author, leaving open the full range of Old English literature between the 7th and the early 10th centuries. Any attempt to link the man with a documented historical figure has met failure or resulted in an improbable connection.[clarification needed] However, the presence of early West Saxon forms in both manuscripts means that it is possible an Alfred [disambiguation

needed]ian scribe initially translated Cynewulf’s verse, placing him no later than the turn of the tenth century.[1]

A tentative terminus post quem is based on the two textual variations of Cynewulf’s name, Cynewulf and Cynwulf. The older spelling of the name was Cyniwulf, and Sisam points out that the "i" tends to change to an "e" about the middle of the eighth century, and the general use of the "i" phases itself out by the end of the century, suggesting Cynewulf cannot be dated much before the year 800.[5] Moreover, it has been argued that the “cult of the cross,” which can find ground in Cynewulf’s Elene, achieved its cultural apex in the eighth century.[6] Also deserving consideration is the

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argument that the acrostic was most fashionable in ninth century poetry and Cynewulf’s own acrostic signature would have followed the trend during this time.[6]

IdentityCynewulf was without question a literate and educated man, since there is no other way we can "account for the ripeness which he displays in his poetry." [7] Given the subject matter of his poetry he was likely a "man in holy orders," and the deep Christian knowledge conveyed through his verse implies that he was well learned in ecclesiastical and hagiographical literature, as well as the dogma and doctrine of the Catholic Church.[8] His apparent reliance on Latin sources for inspiration also means he knew the Latin language, and this of course would correlate with him being a man of the Church.

Cynewulf as an Anglo-Saxon given name (literally meaning "kin-wulf") is well attested. Cynewulf of Lindisfarne (d. c. 780) is a plausible candidate for Cynewulf the poet, based no the argument that the poet's elaborate religious pieces must lend themselves to "the scholarship and faith of the professional ecclesiastic speaking with authority",[9] but this conclusion is not univecrsally accepted.[10] Alternative suggestions[by whom?] for the poet's identity include Cynwulf, a Dunwich priest (fl. 803), and Cenwulf, Abbot of Peterborough (d. 1006).

WorksFollowing the studies of S. K. Das and Claes Schaar,[year needed] mainstream scholarship tends to limit Cynewulf’s canon to the four poems which bear his acrostic mark:[11] the Exeter Book holds Cynewulf’s Juliana and Christ II (The Ascension) and the Vercelli Book his Elene and Fates of the Apostles.

Early scholars for a long while assigned a plethora of Old English pieces to Cynewulf on the basis that these pieces somewhat resembled the style of his signed poems. [12]

It was at one time plausible to believe that Cynewulf was author of the Riddles of the Exeter Book, the Phoenix, the Andreas, and the Guthlac; even famous unassigned poems such as the Dream of the Rood, the Harrowing of Hell, and the Physiologus have at one time been ascribed to him.

The four poems, like a substantial portion of Anglo-Saxon poetry, are sculpted in alliterative verse. All four poems draw upon Latin sources such as homilies and hagiographies (the lives of saints) for their content, and this is to be particularly contrasted to other Old English poems, e.g. Genesis, Exodus, and Daniel, which are drawn directly from the Bible as opposed to secondary accounts.

In terms of length, Elene is by far the longest poem of Cynewulf’s corpus at 1,321 lines. It is followed by Juliana, at 731 lines, Christ II, at 427 lines, and The Fates of the Apostles, at a brisk 122 lines. Three of the poems are “martyrolical,” in that the central character(s) in each die/suffer for their religious values. In Elene, Saint Helena endures her quest to find the Holy Cross and spread Christianity; in Juliana, the title character dies after she refuses to marry a pagan man, thus retaining her Christian integrity; in Fates of the Apostles, the speaker creates a song that meditates on the deaths of the apostles which they “joyously faced.”[13]

Elene and Juliana fit in the category of poems that depict the lives of saints. These two poems along with Andreas and Guthlac (parts A and B) constitute the only versified saints' legends in the Old English vernacular. The Ascension (Christ II) is outside the

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umbrella of the other three works, and is a vehement description of a devotional subject.

The exact chronology of the poems is not known. One argument asserts that Elene is likely the last of the poems because the "autobiographical" epilogue implies that Cynewulf is old at the time of composition,[14] but this view has been doubted. Nevertheless, it seems that Christ II and Elene represent the cusp of Cynewulf’s career, while Juliana and Fates of the Apostles seem to be created by a less inspired, and perhaps less mature, poet.[15]

Runic signatureAll four of Cynewulf's poems contain passages where the letters of the poet’s name are woven into the text using runic symbols that also double as meaningful ideas pertinent to the text. In Juliana and Elene, the interwoven name is spelled in the more recognizable form as Cynewulf, while in Fates and Christ II it is observed without the medial e so the runic acrostic says Cynwulf.

The practice of claiming authorship over one’s poems was a break from the tradition of the anonymous poet, where no composition was viewed as being owned by its creator. Cynewulf devised a tradition where authorship would connote ownership of the piece and an originality that would be respected by future generations. Furthermore, by integrating his name, Cynewulf was attempting to retain the structure and form of his poetry that would “undergo mutations” otherwise. [16] From a different perspective, Cynewulf’s intent may not have been to claim authorship, but to "seek the prayers of others for the safety of his soul." It is contended that Cynewulf wished to be remembered in the prayers of his audience in return for the pleasure they would derive from his poems. In a sense his expectation of a spiritual reward can be contrasted with the material reward that other poets of his time would have expected for their craft.[17]

Justification as a PoetCynewulf’s justification as a poet stems from the idea that "poetry" was "associated with wisdom." [18] In his Christ II, Cynewulf writes the following:

Then he who created this world…honoured us and gave us gifts…and also sowed and set in the mind of men many kinds of wisdom of heart. One he allows to remember wise poems, sends him a noble understanding, through the spirit of his mouth. The man whose mind has been given the art of wisdom can say and sing all kinds of things.

By looking at Cynewulf’s autobiographical reflection in the epilogue of Elene, it is evident that he believes his own skill in poetry comes directly from God, who "unlocked the art of poesy" within him.[19]

Cædmon

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopaedia

Cædmon (  / ̍ k æ d m ə n / or / ̍ k æ d m ɒ n / ) is the earliest English (Northumbrian) poet whose name is known. An Anglo-Saxon who cared for the animals and was attached to the double monastery of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey) during the abbacy (657–680)

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of St. Hilda (614–680), he was originally ignorant of "the art of song" but learned to compose one night in the course of a dream, according to the 8th-century monk Bede. He later became a zealous monk and an accomplished and inspirational Christian poet.

Cædmon is one of twelve Anglo-Saxon poets identified in medieval sources, and one of only three for whom both roughly contemporary biographical information and examples of literary output have survived.[1] His story is related in the Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum ("Ecclesiastical History of the English People") by Bede who wrote, "[t]here was in the Monastery of this Abbess a certain brother particularly remarkable for the Grace of God, who was wont to make religious verses, so that whatever was interpreted to him out of scripture, he soon after put the same into poetical expressions of much sweetness and humility in English, which was his native language. By his verse the minds of many were often excited to despise the world, and to aspire to heaven."

Cædmon's only known surviving work is Cædmon's Hymn, the nine-line alliterative vernacular praise poem in honour of God which he supposedly learned to sing in his initial dream. The poem is one of the earliest attested examples of Old English and is, with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry. It is also one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language.

Life

Memorial to Cædmon, St Mary's Churchyard, Whitby. The inscription reads, "To the glory of God and in memory of Cædmon the father of English Sacred Song. Fell asleep hard [near] by, 680"

Bede's accountThe sole source of original information about Cædmon's life and work is Bede's Historia ecclesiastica.[2] According to Bede, Cædmon was a lay brother who cared for the animals at the monastery Streonæshalch (now known as Whitby Abbey). One evening, while the monks were feasting, singing, and playing a harp, Cædmon left early to sleep with the animals because he knew no songs. The impression clearly given by St. Bede is that he lacked the knowledge of how to compose the lyrics to songs. While asleep, he had a dream in which "someone" (quidam) approached him and asked him to sing principium creaturarum, "the beginning of created things."

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After first refusing to sing, Cædmon subsequently produced a short eulogistic poem praising God, the Creator of heaven and earth.

Upon awakening the next morning, Cædmon remembered everything he had sung and added additional lines to his poem. He told his foreman about his dream and gift and was taken immediately to see the abbess. The abbess and her counsellors asked Cædmon about his vision and, satisfied that it was a gift from God, gave him a new commission, this time for a poem based on "a passage of sacred history or doctrine", by way of a test. When Cædmon returned the next morning with the requested poem, he was ordered to take monastic vows. The abbess ordered her scholars to teach Cædmon sacred history and doctrine, which after a night of thought, Bede records, Cædmon would turn into the most beautiful verse. According to Bede, Cædmon was responsible for a large number of splendid vernacular poetic texts on a variety of Christian topics.

After a long and zealously pious life, Cædmon died like a saint: receiving a premonition of death, he asked to be moved to the abbey’s hospice for the terminally ill where, having gathered his friends around him, he expired, after receiving the Holy Eucharist, just before nocturns. Although he is often listed as a saint, this is not confirmed by Bede and it has recently been argued that such assertions are incorrect.[3]

The details of Bede's story, and in particular of the miraculous nature of Cædmon's poetic inspiration, are not generally accepted by scholars as being entirely accurate, but there seems no good reason to doubt the existence of a poet named Cædmon. Bede's narrative has to be read in the context of the Christian belief in miracles, and it shows at the very least that Bede, an educated and intelligent man, believed Cædmon to be an important figure in the history of English intellectual and religious life.[4]

DatesBede gives no specific dates in his story. Cædmon is said to have taken holy orders at an advanced age and it is implied that he lived at Streonæshalch at least in part during Hilda’s abbacy (657–680). Book IV Chapter 25 of the Historia ecclesiastica appears to suggest that Cædmon’s death occurred at about the same time as the fire at Coldingham Abbey, an event dated in the E text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle to 679, but after 681 by Bede.[5] The reference to his temporibus ‘at this time’ in the opening lines of Chapter 25 may refer more generally to Cædmon’s career as a poet. However, the next datable event in the Historia ecclesiastica is King Ecgfrith’s raid on Ireland in 684 (Book IV, Chapter 26). Taken together, this evidence suggests an active period beginning between 657 and 680 and ending between 679 and 684.

Modern discoveriesThe only biographical or historical information that modern scholarship has been able to add to Bede’s account concerns the Brittonic origins of the poet’s name. Although Bede specifically notes that English was Cædmon’s "own" language, the poet’s name is of Celtic origin: from Proto-Welsh *Cadṽan (from Brythonic *Catumandos).[6] Several scholars have suggested that Cædmon himself may have been bilingual on the basis of this etymology, Hilda’s close contact with Celtic political and religious hierarchies, and some (not very close) analogues to the Hymn in Old Irish poetry.[7] Other scholars have noticed a possible onomastic allusion to ‘Adam Kadmon’ in the poet’s name, perhaps suggesting that the entire story is allegorical.[8]

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Other medieval sources

Ruins of Streonæshalch (Whitby Abbey) in North Yorkshire, England— founded in 657 by St. Hilda, the abbey fell to a viking attack in 867 and was abandoned. It was re-built in 1078 and flourished until 1540 when it was destroyed by Henry VIII.

No other independent accounts of Cædmon’s life and work are known to exist. The only other reference to Cædmon in English sources before the 12th century is found in the 10th century Old English translation of Bede's Latin Historia. Otherwise, no mention of Cædmon is found in the corpus of surviving Old English. The Old English translation of the Historia ecclesiastica does contain several minor details not found in Bede’s Latin original account. Of these, the most significant is that Cædmon felt "shame" for his inability to sing vernacular songs before his vision, and the suggestion that Hilda’s scribes copied down his verse æt muðe "from his mouth".[9] These differences are in keeping with the Old English translator’s practice in reworking Bede’s Latin original,[10] however, and need not, as Wrenn argues, suggest the existence of an independent English tradition of the Cædmon story.[11]

The HeliandA second, possibly pre-12th century allusion to the Cædmon story is found in two Latin texts associated with the Old Saxon Heliand poem. These texts, the Praefatio (Preface) and Versus de Poeta (Lines about the poet), explain the origins of an Old Saxon biblical translation (for which the Heliand is the only known candidate)[12] in language strongly reminiscent of, and indeed at times identical to, Bede’s account of Cædmon’s career.[13] According to the prose Praefatio, the Old Saxon poem was composed by a renowned vernacular poet at the command of the emperor Louis the Pious; the text then adds that this poet had known nothing of vernacular composition until he was ordered to translate the precepts of sacred law into vernacular song in a dream. The Versus de Poeta contain an expanded account of the dream itself, adding that the poet had been a herdsman before his inspiration and that the inspiration itself had come through the medium of a heavenly voice when he fell asleep after pasturing his cattle. While our knowledge of these texts is based entirely on a 16th century edition by Flacius Illyricus,[14] both are usually assumed on semantic and grammatical grounds to be of medieval composition.[15] This apparent debt to the Cædmon story agrees with semantic evidence attested to by Green demonstrating the influence of Anglo Saxon biblical poetry and terminology on early continental Germanic literatures.[16]

Sources and analoguesIn contrast to his usual practice elsewhere in the Historia ecclesiastica, Bede provides no information about his sources for the Cædmon story. Since a similar paucity of sources is also characteristic of other stories from Whitby Abbey in his work, this may indicate that his knowledge of Cædmon's life was based on tradition current at his home monastery in (relatively) nearby Wearmouth-Jarrow.

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Perhaps as a result of this lack of documentation, scholars have devoted considerable attention since the 1830s to tracking down possible sources or analogues to Bede's account. These parallels have been drawn from all around the world, including biblical and classical literature, stories told by the aboriginal peoples of Australia, North America and the Fiji Islands, mission-age accounts of the conversion of the Xhosa in Southern Africa, the lives of English romantic poets, and various elements of Hindu and Muslim scripture and tradition.[17] Although the search was begun by scholars such as Sir Francis Palgrave, who hoped either to find Bede’s source for the Cædmon story or to demonstrate that its details were so commonplace as to hardly merit consideration as legitimate historiography,[18] subsequent research has instead ended up demonstrating the uniqueness of Bede’s version: as Lester shows, no "analogue" to the Cædmon story found before 1974 parallels Bede’s chapter in more than about half its key features;[19] the same observation can be extended to cover all analogues since identified.[20]

WorkGeneral corpusBede’s account indicates that Cædmon was responsible for the composition of a large oeuvre of vernacular religious poetry. In contrast to Saints Aldhelm and Dunstan,[21]

Cædmon’s poetry is said to have been exclusively religious. Bede reports that Cædmon "could never compose any foolish or trivial poem, but only those which were concerned with devotion", and his list of Cædmon’s output includes work on religious subjects only: accounts of creation, translations from the Old and New Testaments, and songs about the "terrors of future judgment, horrors of hell, ... joys of the heavenly kingdom, ... and divine mercies and judgments." Of this corpus, only his first poem survives. While vernacular poems matching Bede’s description of several of Cædmon’s later works are found in London, British Library, Junius 11 (traditionally referred to as the "Junius" or "Cædmon" manuscript), the older traditional attribution of these texts to Cædmon or Cædmon’s influence cannot stand. The poems show significant stylistic differences both internally and with Cædmon’s original Hymn,[22]

and there is nothing about their order or content to suggest that they could not have been composed and anthologised without any influence from Bede’s discussion of Cædmon’s oeuvre: the first three Junius poems are in their biblical order and, while Christ and Satan could be understood as partially fitting Bede’s description of Cædmon’s work on future judgment, pains of hell and joys of the heavenly kingdom,[23] the match is not exact enough to preclude independent composition. As Fritz and Day have shown, indeed, Bede’s list itself may owe less to direct knowledge of Cædmon’s actual output than to traditional ideas about the subjects fit for Christian poetry[24] or the order of the catechism.[25] Similar influences may, of course, also have affected the makeup of the Junius volume.[26]

Cædmon's HymnMain article: Cædmon's Hymn

One of two candidates for the earliest surviving copy of Cædmon's Hymn is found in "The Moore Bede" (ca. 737) which is held by the Cambridge University Library (Kk. 5. 16, often referred to as M). The other candidate is St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I. 18 (P)

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The only known survivor from Cædmon's oeuvre is his Hymn (audio version [27] ). The poem is known from 21 manuscript copies,[28] making it the best-attested Old English poem after Bede's Death Song (with 35 witnesses) and the best attested in the poetic corpus in manuscripts copied or owned in the British Isles during the Anglo-Saxon period.[29] The Hymn also has by far the most complicated known textual history of any surviving Anglo-Saxon poem. It is found in two dialects and five distinct recensions (Northumbrian aelda, Northumbrian eordu, West-Saxon eorðan, West-Saxon ylda, and West-Saxon eorðe), all but one of which are known from three or more witnesses.[30] It is one of the earliest attested examples of written Old English and one of the earliest recorded examples of sustained poetry in a Germanic language.[31] Together with the runic Ruthwell Cross and Franks Casket inscriptions, Cædmon's Hymn is one of three candidates for the earliest attested example of Old English poetry.[32]

There is continuing critical debate about the status of the poem as it is now available to us. While some scholars accept the texts of the Hymn as more or less accurate transmissions of Cædmon's original, others argue that they originated as a back-translation from Bede's Latin, and that there is no surviving witness to the original text.[33]

Manuscript evidenceAll copies of Hymn are found in manuscripts of the Historia ecclesiastica or its translation, where they serve as either a gloss to Bede's Latin translation of the Old English poem, or, in the case of the Old English version, a replacement for Bede's translation in the main text of the History. Despite this close connection with Bede's work, the Hymn does not appear to have been transmitted with the Historia ecclesiastica regularly until relatively late in its textual history. Scribes other than those responsible for the main text often copy the vernacular text of the Hymn in manuscripts of the Latin Historia. In three cases, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 243, Oxford, Bodleian Library, Hatton 43, and Winchester, Cathedral I, the poem is copied by scribes working a quarter-century or more after the main text was first set down.[34] Even when the poem is in the same hand as the manuscript’s main text, there is little evidence to suggest that it was copied from the same exemplar as the Latin Historia: nearly identical versions of the Old English poem are found in manuscripts belonging to different recensions of the Latin text; closely related copies of the Latin Historia sometimes contain very different versions of the Old English poem. With the exception of the Old English translation, no single recension of the Historia ecclesiastica is characterised by the presence of a particular recension of the vernacular poem.[35]

Earliest textThe oldest known version of the poem is the Northumbrian aelda recension.[36] The surviving witnesses to this text, Cambridge, University Library, Kk. 5. 16 (M) and St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, lat. Q. v. I. 18 (P), date to at least the mid-8th century. M in particular is traditionally ascribed to Bede's own monastery and lifetime, though there is little evidence to suggest it was copied much before the mid-8th century.[37]

The following text, first column on the left below, has been transcribed from M (mid-8th century; Northumbria). The text has been normalised to show a line-break between each line and modern word-division. A transcription of the likely pronunciation of the text in the early 8th-century Northumbrian dialect in which the text is written is included, along with a modern English translation.

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nu scylun hergan   hefaenricaes uardmetudæs maecti   end his modgidancuerc uuldurfadur   swe he uundra gihwaeseci dryctin   or astelidæhe aerist scop   aelda barnumheben til hrofe   haleg scepen.tha middungeard   moncynnæs uardeci dryctin   æfter tiadæfirum foldu   frea allmectig[38]

[nuː ˈskʲylun ˈherjɑn ˈhevænriːkʲæs wɑrdˈmetudæs ˈmæxti end his ˈmoːdɣiðɔŋkwerk ˈwuldurfɑdur sweː heː ˈwundrɑ ɣiˈhwæsˈeːkʲi ˈdryxtin or ɑːˈstelidæheː ˈæːrist skoːp ˈældɑ ˈbɑrnumˈheven til ˈhroːve ˈhɑːleɣ ˈskʲepːenθɑː ˈmidːunɣæɑrd ˈmɔŋkʲynːæs wɑrdˈeːkʲi ˈdryxtin ˈæfter ˈtiadæˈfirum ˈfoldu ˈfræːɑ ˈɑlːmextiɣ][39]

Now [we] must honour the guardian of heaven,the might of the architect, and his purpose,the work of the father of glory[40] — as he the beginning of wondersestablished, the eternal lord,He first created for the children of men[41]

heaven as a roof, the holy creatorThen the middle earth, the guardian of mankindthe eternal lord, afterwards appointedthe lands for men,[42] the Lord almighty.

Bede's Latin version runs as follows:

Nunc laudare debemus auctorem regni caelestis, potentiam creatoris, et consilium illius facta Patris gloriae: quomodo ille, cum sit aeternus Deus, omnium miraculorum auctor exstitit; qui primo filiis hominum caelum pro culmine tecti dehinc terram custos humani generis omnipotens creavit.

"Now we must praise the author of the heavenly realm, the might of the creator, and his purpose, the work of the father of glory: as he, who is the eternal God, is the author of all miracles; who first created the heavens as highest roof for the children men, then the earth, almighty guardian of the human race."

William Langland

Langland's Dreamer: from an illuminated initial in a Piers Plowman manuscript held at Corpus Christi College, Oxford.

William Langland (ca. 1332 – ca. 1386) is the conjectured author of the 14th-century English dream-vision Piers Plowman.

LifeThe attribution of Piers to Langland rests principally on the evidence of a manuscript held at Trinity College, Dublin (MS 212). This directly ascribes 'Perys Ploughman' to one 'Willielmi de Langlond', son of 'Stacy de Rokayle, who died in Shipton-under-Wychwood, a tenant of the Lord Spenser in the county of Oxfordshire'. Other manuscripts also name the author as 'Robert or William langland', or 'Wilhelmus W.' (most likely shorthand for 'William of Wychwood'). The poem itself also seems to point

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towards Langland's authorship. At one stage the narrator remarks: 'I have lyved in londe...my name is longe wille' (B.XV.152). This can be taken as a coded reference to the poet's name, in the style of much late-medieval literature (see, for instance, Villon's acrostics in Le Testament). Although the evidence may appear slender, Langland's authorship has been widely accepted by commentators since the 1920s. It is not, however, entirely beyond dispute, as recent work by Stella Pates and C. David Benson [1] has demonstrated.

Almost nothing is known of Langland himself. His entire identity rests on a string of conjectures and vague hints. It would seem that he was born in the West Midlands. Langland's narrator receives his first vision while sleeping in the Malvern Hills (between Herefordshire and Worcestershire), which suggests some level of attachment to the area. The dialect of the poem is also consistent with this part of the country. Although his date of birth is unknown, there is a strong indication that he died c. 1385–1386. A note written by one 'Iohan but' ('John But') in a fourteenth-century manuscript of the poem (Rawlinson 137) makes direct reference to the death of its author: whan this werke was wrouyt, ere Wille myte aspie/ Deth delt him a dent and drof him to the erthe/ And is closed vnder clom ('once this work was made, before Will was aware/ Death struck him a blow and knocked him to the ground/ And now he is buried under the soil'). Since But himself, according to Edith Rickert, seems to have died in 1387, Langland must have died shortly before this date.

The rest of our knowledge of the poet can only be reconstructed from Piers itself. There is in fact a wealth of ostensibly biographical data in the poem, but it is difficult to know how this should be treated. The C-text of Piers contains a passage in which Will describes himself as a 'loller' or 'idler' living in the Cornhill area of London, and refers directly to his wife and child: it also suggests that he was well above average height, and made a living reciting prayers for the dead. However, it would be rash to take this episode at face value. The distinction between allegory and 'real-life' in Piers is by no means absolute, and the entire passage, as Wendy Scase observes, is suspiciously reminiscent of the 'false confession' tradition in medieval literature (represented elsewhere by the Confessio Goliae and by Fals-Semblaunt in Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose). A similar passage in the final Passus of the B- and C-texts provides further ambiguous details. This also refers to Will's wife, and describes his torments by Elde (Old Age), as he complains of baldness, gout and impotence. This may well indicate that the poet had already reached middle age by the 1370s: but once again suspicions are aroused by the conventional nature of this description (see, for instance, Walter Kennedy's 'In Praise of Aige' and The Parlement of the Thre Ages), and the fact that it occurs towards the end of the poem, when Will's personal development is reaching its logical conclusion.

Further details can be inferred from the poem, but these are also far from unproblematic. For instance, the detailed and highly sophisticated level of religious knowledge in the poem indicates that Langland had some connection to the clergy, but the nature of this relationship is uncertain. The poem shows no obvious bias towards any particular group or order of churchmen, but is rather even-handed in its anticlericalism, attacking the regular and secular clergy indiscriminately. This makes it difficult to align Langland with any specific order. He is probably best regarded, as John Bowers writes, as a member of "that sizable group of unbeneficed clerks who formed the radical fringe of contemporary society...the poorly shod Will is portrayed "y-robed in russet" traveling about the countryside, a crazed dissident showing no respect to his superiors." Malcom Godden has proposed that he lived as an itinerant

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hermit, attaching himself to a patron temporarily, exchanging writing services for shelter and food.

The tradition that Langland was a Wycliffite, an idea promoted by Robert Crowley's 1550 edition of Piers and complicated by early Lollard appropriation of the Plowman-figure (see, for instance, Pierce the Ploughman's Crede and The Plowman's Tale), is almost certainly incorrect. It is true that Langland and Wyclif shared many concerns: both question the value of indulgences and pilgrimage, promote the use of the vernacular in preaching, attack clerical corruption, and even advocate disendowment. But these topics were widely discussed throughout the late fourteenth century, only becoming typically 'Wycliffite' after Langland's death. Furthermore, as Pamela Gradon observes, at no point does Langland echo Wyclif's characteristic teachings on the sacraments.

WILLIAM LANGLAND, the generally accepted author of the Medieval allegorical poem Piers Plowman, is a figure of whom there is no mention in contemporary records. Everything written about his life is educated conjecture based on Langland's texts and later allusions.

Langland was born sometime around 1330. In the B-Text of Piers Plowman, composed around 1377, Imagination says he has followed him "this five and forty winters." In the Dublin manuscript (D.4.1), a note in a fifteenth-century hand claims that Langland's father was one "Stacy de Rokayle." In mid-sixteenth century, Bale in his Illustris Majoris Britanniae wrote that Langland was from "Mortymers Clibury" (now Cleobury Mortimer) in Shropshire near the Malvern Hills where Piers Plowman opens. There was a hamlet named "Langley" nearby, which may explain his last name.1

The poet was educated, inferred both from his own testimony and the quality of his writing, but it is not known where. He seems to have taken so-called 'minor orders' in the church, but, perhaps because he had married, had never taken the 'greater orders'. In Piers Plowman, he mentions "Kytte (Kitty, endearment for Katherine) my Wyf and Kalotte (endearment for Nicolette?) my daughter." At some point, Langland moved to London, where he made a starving wage as a "singer" of masses and as a clerk copying legal documents. He had the reputation of a man who did not bow to his superiors, a man "loathe to reverence lords or ladies, or any soul else."

Langland wrote and rewrote the Vision of Piers Plowman from around 1362 to the time of his death, in at least three different versions or editions, now classified into the A-Text, B-Text, and C-text. Over 50 versions are known to exist in manuscript form, some of them fragmentary. The first edition (A-Text) contains twelve passus or cantos, the second (B-Text) twenty, the third (C-Text) twenty-three. The first group contains no allusions beyond 1362, the second group is thought to have been composed around 1377, and the third group in the 1380s. There is also a "Z-Text", which has been claimed to be a draft even earlier than the A-Text, but acceptance of its authenticity is not unanimous.2 The B-Text is the most complete and strongest poetically, and the one usually studied by college students.

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John But, writing in 1387, described Langland as dead, so he can be thought to have died in 1386-7. Others, however, think it is possible that Langland was the author of a poem about the misgovernment of King Richard II, called "Richard the Redeless" (1399). If Langland was the poem's author, who was living in Bristol at the time, it would mean he returned to the west before his death, sometime around the year 1400.

"He was not only a keen observer and thinker, but also an effective writer. His intense feeling for his fellow-men, his profound pity for their sad plight, unshepherded and guideless as he beheld them, were made effective by his imaginative power and his masterly gift of language and expression. He sees vividly the objects and the sights he describes, and makes his readers see them vividly. He is as exact and realistic as Dante, however inferior in the greatness of his conceptions or in nobleness of poetic form."  — J.W. Hales.

William Langland

William Langland,  (born c. 1330—died c. 1400), presumed 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 some of the author’s imagery is powerful and direct.

There were originally thought to be three versions of Piers Plowman: the A version of the text, which was the earliest, followed by the B and C versions that consisted of revisions and further amplifications of the major themes of A. However, a fourth version, called Z, has been suggested and the order of issue questioned. The version described here is from the B text, which consists of (1) a prologue and seven passus (divisions) concerned primarily with the life of man in society, the dangers of Meed (love of gain), and manifestations of the seven capital sins; and (2) 13 passus ostensibly dealing with the lives of Do-wel, Do-bet, and Do-best; in effect, with the growth of the individual Christian in self-knowledge, grace, and charity.

In its general structure the poem mirrors the complexity of the themes with which it deals, particularly in the recurring concepts of Do-wel, Do-bet, and Do-best, all in the end seen as embodied in Christ. They are usually identified with the active, contemplative, and “mixed” religious life, but the allegory of the poem is often susceptible to more than one interpretation, and some critics have related it to the traditional exegetical way of interpreting the Scriptures historically, allegorically, anagogically, and topologically.

Little is known of Langland’s life: he is thought to have been born somewhere in the region of the Malvern Hills, in Worcestershire, and if he is to be identified with the “dreamer” of the poem, he may have been educated at the Benedictine school in

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Great Malvern. References in the poem suggest that he knew London and Westminster as well as Shropshire, and he may have been a cleric in minor orders in London.

Langland clearly had a deep knowledge of medieval theology and was fully committed to all the implications of Christian doctrine. He was interested in the asceticism of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, and his comments on the defects of churchmen and the religious in his day are nonetheless concomitant with his orthodoxy.

William Langland (c.1332?-c.1400?)Piers Plowman  With hym ther was a PLOWMAN, was his brother,That hadde ylad of dong ful many a fother;A trewe swynkere and a good was he,Lyvynge in pees and parfit charitee.(General Prologue, I.529-32)   William Langland, generally thought to be the author of Piers Plowman, was apparently born and raised in the West of England, but he lived in London, which is a principal subject of the early parts of his poem. There is, as a matter of fact, little proof for Langland's existence, and all that is known of him is inferred from supposedly autobiographical statements in the poem (such as the reference to his wife and child at the end of passus XVIII, for which see below). Scholars refer to the author as "Langland" for the sake more of convenience than of accuracy.

There is no proof that Chaucer knew Langland or his works, but London was not a large town (about 40 to 50,000 inhabitants) and Langland's work, as shown by the number of surviving manuscripts (over fifty), was very well known in his time. Some scholars have argued that Chaucer based his Plowman on the figure of Piers Plowman; J.A.W. Bennett, "Chaucer's Contemporary," in Piers Plowman: Critical Approaches, ed. S.S. Hussey, 1969, 310-24 [Widener 12433.9.5].

However that may be, Langland's lively image of London life in his Prologue and account of the marriage of Lady Meed and of the confessions of the Seven Deadly Sins is well worth comparing to Chaucer's image of English life in the fourteenth century.

The poem exists in three versions: the A Version (Prologe and the Vision of Piers Plowman, Passus I to VII), the B Version (revision of A and addition of the Do Well, Do Better, Do Best section , Passus VIII to XX), and the C Version, a revision of the whole. Some scholars also recogize a "Z Version."

For translations of parts of the B-text version (the version most readers prefer) see:

Prologue: Prologue (The Fair Field of Folk) The Vision of Piers Plowman:

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Passus I (The Dreamer is Instructed by Holy Church)Passus II (Lady Meed Appears)Passus III (The Debate of Meed and Conscience)Passus IV (Reason Counsels the King)Passus V (Confession of the Seven Deadly Sins)Passus VI (Piers Sets All to Work)Passus VII (The Pardon Granted to Piers)

One passus from Do-well, Do-Better, Do-Best: Passus XVIII (The Harrowing of Hell) There have been many translations of the whole work: Piers Plowman: the A-text: an alliterative verse translation, tr. Francis Dolores Covella. intro. and notes David C. Fowler. Binghamton, 1992. [PR 2013.C67 1992].

Piers Plowman: A new translation of the B-text, tr. A.V.C. Schmidt, Oxford, OUP, 1992 [PR2013.S3].

The Book Concerning Piers the Plowman,tr. Donald and Rachel Attwater (NY, Dutton, 1957) [PR2013.A8x 1957]. (Texts on this site are from this edition.)

William Langland's Piers Plowman: the C version: a verse translation. tr. George Economou, Philadelphia, The Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1996 [PR 2013.E38]

Will's vision of Piers Plowman / William Langland, an alliterative verse translation by E. Talbot Donaldson; edited, introduced, and annotated by Elizabeth D. Kirk and Judith H. Anderson, New York, W.W. Norton, 1990. For editions of the original (those of Schmidt and Pearsall are most accessible for students) see: All the versions: A.V.C. Schmidt, ed. Piers Plowman: a parallel text of the A, B, C, and Z versions (London, 1995) [PR 2010.S3 1995 ].

W.W. Skeat, ed., Piers Plowman, 2 vols., Oxford, 1869; often reprinted.) This remains a very useful edition, especially for its notes. [PR2010.S5]

George Kane, gen. ed. Piers Plowman: the three versions (Vol. 1, ed George Kane, London, Athlone, 1986; Vol. 2, ed. George Kane and E.T. Donaldson, London, Athlone, rev.ed., 1988; Vol.3, ed. George Russel and George Kane), London, Athlone, 1988-1997 [PR 2010 .K3]. The B-text: A.V.C. Schmidt, ed., William Langland, The Vision of Piers Plowman, London, Dent, 1987, which is fully annotated. The C-Text:Derek Pearsall, ed., Piers Plowman, the C-Text, corrected ed., Exeter, Exeter Univ. Press, 1994 [PR 2010 .P4]

For an a useful collection of links see The William Langland Page. Advanced students can greatly profit from the Piers Plowman

Electronic Archive, created and maintained by Hoyt N. Duggan. Bibliography:

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Derek Pearsall, An Annotated Critical Biography of Langland (New York and London, 1990) [PR2015.Z99 P43 1990x].

See also the annual bibliographies in: o The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 1987- [PR2015.Y43x]

And see Derek Pearsall's Thirty Year Bibliography Back to Geoffrey Chaucer Page | (Or use your browser's back button to return to the previous page.)

Last modified: May, 2, 2006 Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College

Texts on this page prepared and maintained by L. D. Benson (ldb@wjh.harvard.edu)

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