In the mid-15th century a rhyme royal "Plowman's Tale" was added to the text of The Canterbury Tales in the Christ Church MS. This tale is actually an orthodox Roman Catholic, possibly anti-Lollard version of a Marian miracle story written by Thomas Hoccleve called Item de Beata Virgine. Someone composed and added a prologue to fit Hoccleve's poem into Chaucer's narrative frame. This bogus tale did not survive into the printed editions of Chaucer's Works.
The better-known "Plowman's Tale" was included in printed editions of Chaucer's Works. It is a decidedly Wycliffite anti-fraternal tale that was written ca. 1400 and circulated among the Lollards. Sometimes titled The Complaynte of the Plowman, it is 1380 lines long, composed of eight-line stanzas (rhyme scheme ABABBCBC with some variations suggesting interpolation) like Chaucer's "Monk's Tale". There is no clear internal/design connection in "The Plowman's Tale" with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales or Piers Plowman. Anthony Wotton, who was probably the editor of the 1606 edition of "The Plowman's Tale", suggested that "The Plowman's Tale" makes a reference to Jack Upland or, more likely, Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, since the main character in "The Plowman's Tale" says: "Of Freres I haue told before / In a making of a Crede..." (1065–66). The Plowman's Tale also borrows heavily from the Crede.
Some sections of "The Plowman's Tale", such as the prologue, were added in the 16th century to make it fit better as one of Chaucer's tales. The prologue announces that a sermon is to follow in the tale. Instead, a traveller with none of the characteristics of Chaucer's plowman (or any literary plowman of the era) overhears a Pelican and a Griffin debating about the clergy. Most of the lines are the Pelican's, who attacks the typical offences in an evangelical manner, discusses Antichrist, and appeals to the secular government to humble the church. The Pelican is driven off by force but is then vindicated by a Phoenix. The tale ends with a disclaimer wherein the author distinguishes his own views from those of the Pelican, stating that he will accept what the church requires.
The association of this and other texts with Chaucer was possible because Chaucer's "General Prologue" to The Canterbury Tales introduces a Plowman who never receives a tale. This omission seems to have sparked the creativity of others from an early date. In the "General Prologue", the Host jokes about the Plowman's brother, who is the Parson. In some surviving manuscripts the Host suggests that the Parson is a "Lollere." As early as 1400, Chaucer's courtly audience grew to include members of the rising literate, middle-/merchant class, which included many Lollard sympathizers who would have been inclined to believe in a Lollard Chaucer.
Printed editions and their interpretation
The sole surviving manuscript of "The Plowman's Tale" (written in a 16th-century hand) was inserted at the end of The Canterbury Tales in a copy of Thomas Godfrey/Godfray's 1532 printed edition of Chaucer's Works (STC 5068), edited by William Thynne. (This is in PR 1850 1532 cop. 1 at the University of Texas Harry Ransom Center.) According to Thomas Speght, John Stow had a manuscript copy that is now lost. William Thynne's son, Francis Thynne, wrote in his Animadversions that "The Plowman's Tale" was not printed along with the other tales in 1532 because of suppression started by CardinalThomas Wolsey (ca. 1475–1529/30). However, Francis Thynne's views are often discounted, largely because he was only an infant when his father was working on his Chaucer editions.
Some scholars have argued that The Plowman's Tale was part of a Henrician propaganda effort. Godfrey was probably working with the King's Printer, Thomas Berthelet, and he was protected by Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485–1540), earl of Essex, who was responsible for the Dissolution of the Monasteries (1536–39). But "The Plowman's Tale" could also be used as criticism against the king, since the Pelican marvels at the ignorance of parliament and of the lords and the king concerning the plight of the commons. In the mildest interpretation, "The Plowman's Tale" makes a bid for the necessity and appropriateness of heeding the concerns of the commons.
"The Plowman's Tale" was successfully printed on its own in an octavo edition by Godfray ca. 1533–36 (STC 5099.5). In 1542, Tyndale's New Testament and other vernacular books were banned – essentially everything printed in English before 1540 – with the exception of "Canterburye tales, Chaucers bokes, Gowers bokes and stories of mennes lieves" according to a royal statute, the Act for the Advancement of True Religion. "The Plowman's Tale" was printed again as a duodecimo volume in London by William Hyll ca. 1548 (STC 5100) as "The Plouumans tale compylled by syr Geffray Chaucher knyght." In the year of the ban it was printed in Thynne's second (1542) edition of Chaucer's Works, under the imprints of William Bonham (STC 5069) and John Reynes (STC 5070).
After 1542, "The Plowman's Tale" appeared in new and reprinted editions of Chaucer's Works based on Thynne's text for some two centuries, during which the Chaucer canon and order of the Canterbury Tales was quite fluid. Thomas Tyrwhitt finally excluded "The Plowman's Tale" from his 1775 edition of the poet's work.
Associated with Chaucer and Piers Plowman from 1500–1700
The king's antiquary (under Henry VIII), John Leland (c. 1506–52), seems to have confused Piers Plowman and "The Plowman's Tale", referring to Petri Aratoris Fabula (Peter/Piers Plowman's Tale) as a Canterbury tale. John Bale similarly included Arator Narratio (Plowman's Tale) in his list of the Canterbury Tales in his Scriptorum Illustrium Maioris Brytanniae . . . Catalogus (Basle, 1557, 1559). Corroborating Francis Thynne, Leland's remarks on The Plowman's Tale are as follows: "But the tale of Piers Plowman, which by the common consent of the learned is attributed to Chaucer as its true author, has been suppressed in each edition, because it vigorously inveighed against the bad morals of the priests" (Commentarii de Scriptoribus Britannicis ed. Anthony Hall. Like Bale's Chaucer, Leland's Chaucer is a reformer and follower of Wycliffe.
John Foxe praised "The Plowman's Tale" in his first (1563) and second (1570) editions of the immensely influential Acts and Monuments. Foxe implies that Chaucer was a proto-Protestant Lollard and assumes he was the author of "The Plowman's Tale". (The Testament of Love and Jack Upland are also mentioned.) The Plowman's Tal was again printed by itself in 1606 by Anthony Wotton. The full title of Wotton's edition reads: "The Plough-mans Tale. Shewing by the doctrine and liues of the Romish Clergie, that the pope is AntiChrist and they his Ministers. Written by Sir Geffrey Chaucer, Knight, amongst his Canterburie tales: and now set out apart from the rest, with a short exposition of the words and matters, for the capacitie and understanding of the simpler sort of Readers."
Edmund Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender (1579) makes references to and borrows from The Plowman's Tale (attributing it to Chaucer), possibly Pierce the Plowman's Crede, and, more obscurely, perhaps to Piers Plowman. Gabriel Harvey's copy of the Speght 1598 edition of Chaucer's Works (BL Additional 42518) summarises The Plowman's Tale with the note "Ecclesiastical abuses."
Sir William Vaughan's Golden Fleece (1626) presents Chaucer as Wycliffe's master and the author of The Plowman's Tale, which is used to give lines to Duns Scotus and Chaucer in a debate between them that centres on the Pope (Is he Antichrist?) just as in the 1606 Wotton edition. This work promotes the colony at Newfoundland over against the vices of contemporary England. Famous historical figures, including Chaucer and Scotus, are brought to the court of Apollo to discuss English society. Apollo ultimately proclaims that all the problems that are exposed will be cured by the Golden Fleece, which is in Newfoundland.
Other seventeenth-century citations of The Plowman's Tale are: Anthony Wotton's A Defense of Mr. Perkins Booke, Called a Reformed Catholike (1606), Simon Birkbeck's The Protestant's Evidence Taken Ovt of Good Records (1635), John Favour's Antiquitie Trivmphing Over Noveltie (1619), and John Milton's Of Reformation (1641) and An Apology Against a Pamphlet (1642).
John Dryden remarks in Fables Ancient and Modern (1700) that Chaucer had "some little Byas toward the Opinions of Wycliff . . . somewhat of which appears in the Tale of Piers Plowman [an interesting conflation of Langland and pseudo-Chaucer]: Yet I cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the Vices of the Clergy of his Age: Their Pride, their Ambition, their Pomp, their Avarice, their Worldly Interest, deserv'd the lashes which he gave them, both in that, and in most of his Canterbury Tales." The phrase "inveighed . . . against the clergy" is possibly derived from Leland; similar synopses appear in the editions of Chaucer's Works starting with Thynne. Another eighteenth-century commentator, John Dart, rejected The Plowman's Tale as Chaucer's but still agreed that Chaucer "bitterly inveighs against the Priests and Fryars", although he "expresses his regard for the secular clergy who lived up to their profession".
Costomeris, Robert. "The Yoke of Canon: Chaucerian Aspects of The Plowman's Tale." Philological Quarterly. 71.2 (1991): 175–198.
Forni, Kathleen. "The Chaucerian Apocrypha: Did Usk's 'Testament of Love' and the 'Plowman's Tale' Ruin Chaucer's Early Reputation?" Neuphilologische Mitteilungen: Bulletin de la Société Néophilologique [Bulletin of the Modern Language Society, Helsinki, Finland] 98.3 (1997): 261–72.
---. The Chaucerian Apocrypha: A Counterfeit Canon. Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2001.
Heffernan, Thomas J. "Aspects of Chaucerian Apocrypha: Animadversions of William Thynne's edition of the Plowman's Tale." Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honor of Derek Brewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 155–167.
Irvine, Annie S. "A Manuscript Copy of The Plowman's Tale." University of Texas Studies in English 12 (1932): 27–56.
Long, Percy W. "Spenser and the Plowman's Tale." Modern Language Notes 28.8 (1913): 262.
Patterson, Paul J. "Reforming Chaucer: Margins and Religion in an Apocryphal Canterbury Tale." Book History 8 (2005): 11–36.
Thorne, J. B. "Piers or Will: Confusion of Identity in the Early Reception of Piers Plowman." Medieum Ævum 60 (1991): 273–84.
The Plowman's Tale Ed. James Dean. Introduction and Annotated Text. Originally Published in Six Ecclesiastical Satires Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991.
The Plowman's Tale: The c. 1532 and 1606 Editions of a Spurious Canterbury Tale. Ed. Mary Rhinelander McCarl. New York: Garland Press, 1997.
The Ploughman's Tale. Ed. Andrew Wawn. PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham, 1969.
Thynne, Francis. Animadversions uppon the Annotaciouns and Corrections of some Imperfections of Impressions of Chaucers Workes (sett downe before tyme, and nowe) reprinted in the yere of oure lorde 1598. Ed. G. H. Kingsley (1865) EETS OS 9. Rev. edn F. J. Furnivall, 1875. EETS SS 13. Rpt. 1891, 1928 and 1965. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965.
Wawn, Andrew N. "The Plowman's Tale and Reformation Propaganda: The Testimonies of Thomas Godfray and I Playne Piers." Bulletin of the John Rylands Library. 56 (1973): 174–192.
---. "The Genesis of The Plowman's Tale." Yearbook of English Studies. 2 (1972): 21–40.
---. "The Plowman's Tale." The Spenser Encyclopedia. Gen ed. A. C. Hamilton. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1990: 548–49.
---. "Chaucer, Wyclif, and the Court of Apollo." English Language Notes 10 (1972–73): 15–20.
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of twenty-four stories that runs to over 17,000 lines written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer between 1387 and 1400. It is widely regarded as Chaucer's magnum opus. The tales are presented as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together from London to Canterbury to visit the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral. The prize for this contest is a free meal at the Tabard Inn at Southwark on their return.
Geoffrey Chaucer was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for The Canterbury Tales. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He was the first writer to be buried in what has since come to be called Poets' Corner, in Westminster Abbey. Chaucer also gained fame as a philosopher and astronomer, composing the scientific A Treatise on the Astrolabe for his 10-year-old son Lewis. He maintained a career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier, diplomat, and member of parliament.
Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic theologian who was dismissed from the University of Oxford in 1381 for criticism of the Roman Catholic Church. The Lollards' demands were primarily for reform of Western Christianity. They formulated their beliefs in the Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards.
Piers Plowman or Visio Willelmi de Petro Ploughman is a Middle English allegorical narrative poem by William Langland. It is written in un-rhymed, alliterative verse divided into sections called passus.
The Romaunt of the Rose is a partial translation into Middle English of the French allegorical poem, Le Roman de la Rose. Originally believed to be the work of Chaucer, the Romaunt inspired controversy among 19th-century scholars when parts of the text were found to differ in style from Chaucer's other works. Also the text was found to contain three distinct fragments of translation. Together, the fragments—A, B, and C—provide a translation of approximately one-third of Le Roman.
William Langland is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as Piers Plowman, an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem translated the language and concepts of the cloister into symbols and images that could be understood by a layman.
Geoffrey Chaucer presumably never finished "The Cook's Tale" and it breaks off after 58 lines, although some scholars argue that Chaucer deliberately left the tale unfinished. The story starts telling of an apprentice named Perkyn who is fond of drinking and dancing. Perkyn is released by his master and moves in with a friend who also loves to drink, and whose wife is a shopkeeper whose real occupation is that of a prostitute.
The Hengwrt Chaucer manuscript is an early-15th-century manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, held in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth. It is an important source for Chaucer's text, and was possibly written by someone with access to an original authorial holograph, now lost.
The General Prologue is the first part of The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury agree to take part in a storytelling competition, and describes the pilgrims themselves.
Pierce the Ploughman's Crede is a medieval alliterative poem of 855 lines, lampooning the four orders of friars.
Nevill Henry Kendal Aylmer Coghill was an English literary scholar, known especially for his modern English version of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Sir Richard Ros, was an English poet, the son of Sir Thomas Ros, lord of Hamlake (Helmsley) in Yorkshire and of Belvoir in Leicestershire.
The Pilgrim's Tale is an English anti-monastic poem. It was probably written ca. 1536–38, since it makes references to events in 1534 and 1536 – e.g. the Lincolnshire Rebellion – and borrows from The Plowman's Tale and the 1532 text by William Thynne of Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose, which is cited by page and line. It remains the most mysterious of the pseudo-Chaucerian texts. In his 1602 edition of the Works of Chaucer, Thomas Speght mentions that he hoped to find this elusive text. A prefatory advertisement to the reader in the 1687 edition of the Works speaks of an exhaustive search for The Pilgrim's Tale, which had proved fruitless
Jack Upland or Jack up Lande is a polemical, probably Lollard, literary work which can be seen as a "sequel" to Piers Plowman, with Antichrist attacking Christians through corrupt confession. Jack asks a "flattering friar" nearly seventy questions attacking the mendicant orders and exposing their distance from scriptural truth.
The Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland's poem Piers Plowman. Because the Plowman appears in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer but does not have his own tale, plowman tales are sometimes used as additions to The Canterbury Tales, or otherwise conflated or associated with Chaucer.
The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe: written not longe after the yere of our Lorde. M. and three hundred is a short, anonymous English Christian text, probably written in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century and first printed in about 1531. It consists of a prose tract, in the form of a polemical prayer, expressing Lollard sentiments and arguing for religious reform. In it, the simple ploughman/narrator speaks on behalf of "the repressed common man imbued with the simple truths of the Bible and a knowledge of the commandments against the mighty and monolithic conservative church". The pastoral-ecclesiastical metaphor of shepherds and sheep is used extensively as a number of criticisms are made about such things as confession, indulgences, purgatory, tithing and celibacy. The Prayer became important in the sixteenth century, when its themes were taken up by proponents of the Protestant Reformation.
The Prologue and Tale of Beryn are spurious fifteenth century additions to Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. They are both written in Middle English.
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories, mostly in verse, written by Geoffrey Chaucer chiefly from 1387 to 1400. They are held together in a frame story of a pilgrimage on which each member of the group is to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury, and two on the way back. Fewer than a quarter of the projected tales were completed before Chaucer's death. It is uncertain in what order Chaucer intended the tales to appear; moreover it is very possible that, as a work-in-progress, no final authorial order of tales ever existed.
William Thynne was an English courtier and editor of Geoffrey Chaucer's works.
Thomas Speght was an English schoolmaster and editor of Geoffrey Chaucer.
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