‘Alle kynnes thynges’: The Ecology of Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman contains many vivid descriptions of the natural world, from the opening scene in which Will wanders the Malvern Hills to his experiences on the Mountain of Middle Earth. At the same time, throughout the poem, the presence of the divine is undeniable; it is a presence that scholars often find difficult to reconcile with the presence of nature. Piers Plowman invites us to consider nature as saturated with the divine and, therefore, illuminates a tradition of writing about nature and the divine that situates nature as a driving force in controlling and directing humankind. In this article, I argue for an ecological reading of Langland’s concept of nature that brings together nature and the divine, reflects environmental thought in the late fourteenth century, and also challenges us to expand our own conceptualisation of ecology.