The poet's circumstances
By its character Langland's poem encourages speculation about him. It belongs to a
genre called the dream-vision, which takes the form of a report by a first-person
narrator who claims to have experienced the vision he recounts. He figures as
participant, encountering personages ranging from the allegorical or fantastic to the
possible, even the historical. The dreamer, if he is named, is called after the poet and,
where this can be checked, has some of his attributes. He is to an indeterminable
extent fashioned in the image of that poet who, for his part, comes to live
imaginatively in the personage of his creation. The poet uses him as a means of
engagement, obviously powerful in a time when poetry was written as if to be read
aloud.