Thank you for this OP. I am curious

There’s also a terrific episode of the BBC podcast In Our Time where scholars of the poem discuss it and the context in which it was written. The whole premise of the show is to make academic study accessible to ordinary people and this episode stands out as particularly good to me. I highly recommend listening to it!

I’ve tried going through the Middle English version you can find online, which does have some annotations and easy access to a Middle English dictionary, but it’s just too hard going to read the whole poem that way (for me at least). The sounds, alliteration and rhythm really come through though.

The only translations I’ve seen have been prose. A well done verse translation is exactly what I want. Thanks for the suggestion.

O wow you unlocked fond memories of my Medieval Literature class in college! My professor was able to read/perform Middle English so he would often bring whatever we were reading to life. I just pulled Piers Plowman off my shelf, as your post inspired me. Of course it’s a Norton Critical Edition, but it is also the Donaldson translation - just different editors.

If this time period is interesting for you, I also remember covering Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Dante’s The Divine Comedy, Gawain and the Green Knight, and Boccaccio’s The Decameron. I happen to love the latter. I pulled it out during lockdown, as it seemed appropriate (i.e. plague).

It’s so much fun—great example of medieval allegory! When I worked at the William Blake Archive in grad school, we collaborated a lot with the Piers Plowman Project. I loved the book, and there’s a fascinating manuscript history with PP.

By that time, Glutton had put down more than a gallon of ale, and his guts were beginning to rumble like a couple of greedy sows. Then, before you had time to say the Our Father, he had pissed a couple of quarts, and blown such a blast on the round horn of his rump, that all who heard it had to hold their noses, and wished to God he would plug it with a bunch of gorse!

And for the middle English aficionados…

Til Gloton hadde yglubbed a galon and a gille.        His guttes gonne to gothelen as two gredy sowes; He pissed a potel in a Paternoster-while, And blew his rounde ruwet at his ruggebones ende, That alle that herde that horn helde hir nose after And wisshed it hadde ben wexed with a wispe of firses!       

I had never heard of it until this morning when it was featured in an episode of “The History of English Language” podcast. In it, he reads passages in the original middle English pronunciation. Very interesting stuff. William Langland really likes to shit on the king and the clergy.

I remember Piers Plowman being required reading when I had English literature in my senior year of high school. I haven’t read it since…30 years ago. I honestly don’t remember anything about it.