The Piers Plowman tradition is made up of about 14 different poetic and prose works from about the time of John Ball (died 1381) and the Peasants Revolt of 1381 through the reign of Elizabeth I and beyond. All the works feature one or more characters, typically Piers, from William Langland's poem Piers Plowman. (A much larger number of texts, with less obvious connection to Piers Plowman, may also be considered part of the tradition.) Because the Plowman appears in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer but does not have his own tale (one of seven such characters), plowman tales are sometimes used as additions to The Canterbury Tales, or otherwise conflated or associated with Chaucer.
As a rule, they satirically reflect economic, social, political, and religious grievances, and are concerned with political decisions and the relation between commoners and king. In these respects they resemble works such as Poem on the Evil Times of Edward II (1321–27), The Song of the Husbandman (c. 1340), Wynnere and Wastoure (c. 1353), and The Parlement of the Three Ages (c. 1375–1400). The Piers Plowman tradition therefore contributed to an emerging early modern "public sphere". Most of the works of the tradition are anonymous; many are pseudepigraphic by authorial design or later misattribution. The distinction between fiction and history in them is often blurred.
14th and 15th centuries
(Unless otherwise noted, dates given here refer to the year when the work was first written.)
Along with the writings of John Ball, the earliest contributions to the Piers Plowman tradition are extensively associated with the Lollards: Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, an anonymous, Lollard, alliterative, anticlerical, satirical poem written c. 1395 and printed in 1553 and 1561. The Plowman's Tale, also known as The Complaynte of the Ploughman, a Lollard poem written c. 1400 and printed by itself about 1533-1536 and again about 1548. The Praier and Complaynte of the Ploweman unto Christe, a Lollard prose tract and prayer for reform written about 1400, with some sources putting it as early as 1350 or as late as 1450, was printed twice, in about 1531 and 1532. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger, both written about 1405, are usually thought to be by the same author and perhaps two parts of a single work. W. W. Skeat attributed them to Langland himself. The Crowned King (1415)
Less directly and self-consciously evocative of Piers Plowman are: Jack Upland, a Lollard satire written about 1389-1396 Responsiones ad Questiones LXV and Friar Daw's Reply, two anti-Lollard retorts to Jack Upland Upland's Rejoinder, a Lollard retort to Friar Daw's Reply I-blessyd Be Cristes Sonde, sometimes wrongly referred to as God Speed the Plough
16th and 17th centuries
(Note: Unless otherwise noted, dates given here refer to the year when the work was first printed.)
Many of the previously mentioned plowman texts, which first circulated in manuscript, reappeared later in print, often with some degree of intentional alteration and editorializing that aimed at construing them as proto-Protestant . This is true also of the first printed editions of Piers Plowman in 1550 and 1561 by Robert Crowley and Owen Rogers. William Tyndale may have (and was thought by some contemporaries) to have supplied the preface to the printed edition of the Praier and Complaynte, which aroused the critical pen of Thomas More. John Foxe did his part to canonize the same text in four editions of his famous Actes and Monuments from 1570 to 1610. Like Jack Upland, The Plowman's Tale became associated with Geoffrey Chaucer and was added by various editors to four editions of Chaucer's collected works between 1542 and 1602. I Playne Piers which Cannot Flatter, a mixture of parts of The Plowman's Tale and new material added some time after 1540, was printed in 1550 and ascribed to the author of Piers Plowman who was then unknown or identified as either Chaucer, John Wycliffe, or Robert Langland. I Playne Piers was reprinted by the Puritan Martinist writers in the Martin Marprelate Controversy in 1589. It was then retitled, O read me, for I am of great antiquitie . . . I am the Gransier of Martin Mare-prelitte.