Chaucer and LanglandAlthough Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland together dominate fourteenth century English literature, their respective masterpieces, The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, could not be more different. While Langlands poem was immediately popular and influential, it was Chaucer who stood at the head of a literary tradition within a generation of his death. John Bowers asks why and how Chaucer, not Langland, was granted this position. His study