Namangan davlat universiteti ingliz filologiyasi fakulteti amaliy ingliz tili kafedrasi

William Langland (1332-1400)
was a poor priest. His parents were poor but free peasants. 
He denounced the rich churchmen and said that everybody was obliged to work. His name is 
remembered for a poem he wrote, “The Visions of William Concerning Piers the Ploughman” 
(Piers -Peter). Nowadays the poem is called “Piers Plowman”.
“Piers Plowman” is an allegorical poem. In it Vice and Virtue are spoken of as if they were 
human beings. Truth is a young maiden, Greed is an old witch. The poem was very popular in the 
Middle Ages. It begins with a vision which the poet William had on the Malvern Hills. In a long 
and complicated succession of scenes Langland portrays almost every side of fourteenth-century 
life. In his dream the poet sees Piers the Ploughman, a peasant. Piers tells him about the hard life of 
the people. He sees the corruption of wealth, and the inadequacies of government. To him, the only 
salvation lies in honest labour and in the service of Christ. If Langland were not a mystic, he would 
have been a revolutionary. He is the nearest approach to Dante in English poetry, for despite his 
roughness, and the bleak atmosphere of much of his work, he has written the greatest poem in 
English devoted to the Christian way of life.
But modern poetry begins with one of the most prominent people of the Middle English period 
– Geoffrey Chaucer, diplomat, soldier and scholar.
Geoffrey Chaucer 
(1340 - 1400) 
Geoffrey Chaucer is listed by most scholars as one of the three greatest poets in English 
literature (along with William Shakespeare and John Milton). He was born in London. His father, 
John Chaucer, was a wine merchant. In 1357 Geoffrey was listed as a page in the household of the 
wife of Prince Lionel, a son of Edward III. His service in that household indicates that his family 
had sufficient social status for him to receive a courtly education. Throughout the rest of his 
lifetime, Chaucer was in some way connected with members of the royal family. In 1366 Chaucer 
married Philippa Roet, a lady-in-waiting to the Queen. Chaucer rose socially through his marriage. 
In 1368 he became one of the King’s esquires, which in those days meant that he worked in the 
administrative department of the King’s government. One of his duties was to act as a government 
envoy on foreign Diplomatic missions. Chaucer’s diplomatic missions took him first to France and 
later to Italy. 
Chaucer’s poetry is generally divided into three periods.