The Plowman's Tale

There are actually two pseudo-Chaucerian texts called The Plowman's Tale. In the mid-15th century a rhyme royal Plowman's Tale was added to the text of The Canterbury Tales in the Christ Church MS. This tale is actually an orthodox Roman Catholic, possibly anti-Lollard version of a Marian miracle story written by Thomas Hoccleve called Item de Beata Virgine. Someone composed and added a prologue to fit Hoccleve's poem into Chaucer's narrative frame. This bogus tale did not survive into the printed editions of Chaucer's Works.

The better-known Plowman's Tale made it into the printed editions of Chaucer's Works. It is a decidedly Wycliffite anti-fraternal tale that was written ca. 1400 and circulated among the Lollards. Sometimes titled The Complaynte of the Plowman, it is 1380 lines long, composed of eight-line stanzas (ababbcbc with some variations suggesting interpolation) like Chaucer's Monk's Tale. There is no clear internal/design connection in the The Plowman's Tale with Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales or Piers Plowman. Anthony Wotton, who was probably the editor of the 1606 edition of The Plowman's Tale, suggested that The Plowman's Tale makes a reference to Jack Upland or, more likely, Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, since main character in The Plowman's Tale says, "Of Freres I haue told before / In a making of a Crede..." (1065–66). The Plowman's Tale also borrows heavily from the Crede.

Some sections of The Plowman's Tale, such as the prologue, were added in the 16th century to make it fit better as one of Chaucer's tales. The prologue announces that a sermon is to follow in the tale. Instead, a traveler with none of the characteristics of Chaucer's plowman (or any literary plowman of the era) overhears a Pelican and a Griffin debating about the clergy. Most of the lines are the Pelican's, who attacks the typical offenses in an evangelical manner, discusses Antichrist, and appeals to the secular government to humble the church. The Pelican is driven off by force but is then vindicated by a Phoenix. The tale ends with a disclaimer wherein the author distinguishes his own views from those of the Pelican, stating that he will accept what the church requires.

The association of this and other texts with Chaucer was possible because Chaucer's General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales introduces a Plowman who never receives a tale. This omission seems to have sparked the creativity of others from an early date. In the General Prologue, the Host jokes about the Plowman's brother, who is the Parson. In some surviving manuscripts the Host suggests that the Parson is a "Lollere." As early as 1400, Chaucer's courtly audience grew to include members of the rising literate, middle-/merchant class, which included many Lollard sympathizers who would have been inclined to believe in a Lollard Chaucer.