Guy of Warwick and the Active Life of Historical Romance in Piers Plowman

This essay contributes to the ongoing conversation on Langland and romance, arguing that Piers Plowman’s engagement with the genre extends beyond the kind of courtly pastiche that characterizes the Christ-Knight allegory of passūs 16-18. Rather, the insular heroes of historical romance, and that of the Middle English Stanzaic Guy of Warwick in particular, model a relationship between the individual subject and the production of national (or even universal) history that impacts Langland’s own exploration of lay piety. Piers Plowman becomes a framework in which to view the transformation of romance from a literary genre to a historical temper exerting itself on other forms of medieval fiction.