From Edward III to Edward VI: The Vision of Piers Plowman and Early Modern England.

This essay investigates the historical and cultural significance of Robert Crowley’s mid-sixteenth-century editions of PPl.  The limited scholarship on the text to date has focused primarily on the theological significance of Crowley’s editorial project. This essay pushes the scholarship in a new direction by arguing that the historical upheavals of the late 1540s provide the best explanation for the impetus behind Crowley’s publications. A common moment of historical crisis unites the worlds of Crowley and L, suggesting why Crowley may have been attracted to L’s visionary poetry in the first place.