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

Introduction; Part 1 Piers Plowman in Context; Chapter 1 Making History Legal: Piers Plowman and the Rebels of Fourteenth-Century England 1 Previous versions of this essay were presented before marvelously challenging and encouraging audiences at the University Seminar at Columbia University, November 11, 1997; and as a Visiting Faculty Lecturer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne, March 8, 1998. I thank Professors Christopher Baswell at Columbia and Lori Newcomb, Charles Wright, and Lisa Lampert at Urbana-Champagne for these opportunities and for their warm hospitality., Andrew Galloway; Chapter 2 The Luxury of Gender: Piers Plowman B.9 and the Merchant's Tale 1 This essay has been developed from our discussion of this passus and tale during a seminar at the NEH Chaucer and Langland Institute, University of Colorado, Boulder, July 1995. We are indebted to the directors of the Institute, C. David Benson, Elizabeth Robertson, and James Simpson, for providing the impetus to read Chaucer and Langland together. We thank Professor Simpson and fellow participant Kathleen Hewett-Smith for their input at various stages in this project. The essay first appeared in and is reprinted with permission from the Yearbook of Langland Studies 12 (1998): 31-64., Joan Baker, Susan Signe Morrison; Chapter 3 Langland's Romances, Stephen H. A. Shepherd; Chapter 4 The Langland Myth, C. David Benson; Part 2 The Poetry of Piers Plowman; Chapter 5 Langland's Mighty Line, Stephen A. Barney; Chapter 6 Chaucer and Langland as Religious Writers, O. P. Mary Clemente Davlin; Part 3 Through the Lens of Theory; Chapter 7 The Power of Impropriety: Authorial Naming in Piers Plowman, James Simpson; Chapter 8 Measurement and the "Feminine" in Piers Plowman : A Response to Recent Studies of Langland and Gender, Elizabeth Robertson; Part 4 Allegory Reconsidered; Chapter 9 Inventing the Subject and the Personification of Will in Piers Plowman : Rhetorical, Erotic, and Ideological Origins and Limits in Langland's Allegorical Poetics, James J. Paxson; Chapter 10 "Nede ne hath no lawe": Poverty and the De-stabilization of Allegory in the Final Visions of Piers Plowman, Kathleen M. Hewett-Smith;