First Published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Because it has much to contribute toward recent lively debates on such issues as race, gender, dissent, popular religion and culture, Piers Plowman has enjoyed renewed critical attention. This collection of newly written, interdisciplinary essays provides a fresh examination of some of the issues central to study of this seminal poem. Organised under headings including Langland and the 'Age of Chaucer, Allegory Reconsidered and Langland through the eyes of theory,this book of essays explores the aesthetic dimensions of the poem, its relevance to contemporary literary theory and to reconsiderations of fourteenth-century culture and ideology.