The Curse of the Plowman

This essay suggests that the figure of the plowman in late medieval literature has beguiled scholars into misunderstanding the medieval peasantry. For literary critics, the plowman genre has encouraged a limited, canon-dominated approach to the cultural remains of late medieval peasants. For historians, the figure of the plowman has flattened the medieval peasantry into a single class and a single (male) gender.