Friar Daw's Reply

The Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball (died 1381) 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. (A much larger number of texts, with less obvious connection to Piers Plowman, may also be considered part of the tradition.) Because the Plowman appears in the General Prologue to the The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer but does not have his own tale (one of seven such characters), plowman tales are sometimes used as additions to The Canterbury Tales, or otherwise conflated or associated with Chaucer.

As a rule, they satirically reflect economic, social, political, and religious grievances, and are concerned with political decisions and the relation between commoners and king. In these respects they resemble works such as Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II (1321–27), The Song of the Husbandman (c. 1340), Wynnere and Wastoure (c. 1353), and The Parlement of the Three Ages (c. 1375-1400). The Piers Plowman tradition therefore contributed to an emerging early modern "public sphere". Most of the works of the tradition are anonymous; many are pseudepigraphic by authorial design or later misattribution. The distinction between fiction and history in them is often blurred.

(Unless otherwise noted, dates given here refer to the year when the work was first written.)

Along with the writings of John Ball, the earliest contributions to the Piers Plowman tradition are extensively associated with the Lollards:

Less directly and self-consciously evocative of Piers Plowman are:

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