The life and works of William Langland

A Study Day led by Professor Lawrence Warner – Medieval English Literature, King’s College London.

There will be three talks with short breaks in-between:

1) ‘The Uncertainties of William Langland’s Life and Works’.  [ recording ]
2) ‘Langland on the Incarnation’.  [ recording ]
3) ‘The Problem of Penance’.  [ recording ]

In these talks, Lawrence Warner will offer an overview of the fourteenth-century English poet William Langland, his great religious poem Piers Plowman, and the culture that gave rise to it and which it so passionately depicts, satirizes, and loves. Langland was one of the most widely-read authors of his day, and remains a touchstone for many readers and writers now, from the American novelist and essayist Marilynne Robinson to the Londoner (and Humanist) Maureen Duffy.

• Professor Warner’s first talk will cover the basics of Piers Plowman’s complicated history of production, its language and its poetics.
  
• The second turns to what Langland makes of the question: why did God become man? The medieval chapter of the Rev. Samuel Wells’s new book Constructing an Incarnational Theology (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2025) will inform that part of the answer whereby Langland isn’t particularly concerned with soteriology; other parts of the poem’s inconsistent approach are very much to do with who (or, whether everyone) will be saved.
  
• The final talk turns to what Langland saw as a crisis of penance in his era, represented by the growing power of the friars. This was a social dilemma more than a personal one, and the crucial interpretive question is: when Conscience departs the fallen Holy Church Unity in the final lines of the poem, is he turning his back on the institutional church? Or, rather, seeking out new inspiration for its revival?

King’s College , London

Lawrence Warner, Professor of Medieval English

former Director of the International Piers Plowman Society (2013-16)

The event will be held at the Church of St Michael at the North Gate, Oxford.
Speaker’s Handouts for the event, the live-stream of the event will be made available to ticket holders.

Our timetable for the day:

10:20 Doors open, tea/coffee available.
10:35 Introduction by Rev, Anthony Buckley:
10:45 Talk 1 – ‘The Uncertainties of William Langland’s Life and Works’:
11:30 Comfort break:
11:35 Talk 2 – ‘Langland on the Incarnation’:
12:10 Refreshments break (20 min);
12:30 Talk 3 – ‘The Problem of Penance’;
13:15 Q&A;
13:30 Round-up and closing.