The Two Franciscans of Piers Plowman B 8 (C 10, A 9)

The essay reassesses the narrator's encounter with two Franciscan friars in the brief waking episode prefacing the third vision of Piers Plowman . It clarifies the matter of their disagreement, the argument of the friars' responses, and the scene's place in the structure of the poem; it concludes with some suggestions about the use to which Piers Plowman puts its polemical commitments and about the self-awareness with which it does so.