Download or read book The Lost History of Piers Plowman written by Lawrence Warner and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 2011-12-07 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Despite the recent outpouring of scholarship on Piers Plowman, Lawrence Warner contends, we know much less about the poem's production, transmission, and readership than one might think. When did William Langland write each of the three versions of the poem, and when did they enter wide circulation? What role did scribes and other agents play in these processes? The Lost History of "Piers Plowman" engages with these questions to bring about a fundamental shift in our understanding of the genesis and development of the Middle English poem. According to received history, the poem exists in three distinct, chronological versions, the A, B, and C texts, with most scholars agreeing that Langland completed the B text—the version most familiar to modern readers—around 1377-78. Challenging much of the prevalent wisdom about the poem, Warner argues that the received B text is not an integral poem aligned with a single author but, rather, two groups of manuscripts, each of which, because of scribal activities, takes on varying amounts of what we now call C version matter. Through close textual analysis, he reveals that the B text is a conflation of an ur-B text with a collection of passages that belong to the C version of circa 1390, demonstrating that the circulation of the C text actually predates that of the B. The Lost History of "Piers Plowman" is a groundbreaking and provocative work that establishes an entirely new paradigm for the study of one of the central works of Middle English literature. It will be of interest to scholars and students of textual studies, editorial theory, and medieval history.
Download or read book William Langland s Piers Plowman written by William Langland and published by University of Pennsylvania Press. This book was released on 1996-12 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "A gifted poet has given us an astute, adroit, vigorous, inviting, eminently readable translation. . . . The challenging gamut of Langland's language . . . has here been rendered with blessed energy and precision. Economou has indeed Done-Best."—Allen Mandelbaum
Download or read book Piers the Ploughman written by William Langland and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2006-01-26 with total page 375 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Written by a fourteenth-century cleric, this spiritual allegory explores man in relation to his ultimate destiny against the background of teeming, colorful medieval life.
Download or read book Piers Plowman Histories written by and published by . This book was released on 1913 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Myth of Piers Plowman written by Lawrence Warner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-06 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A revisionary account of the powerful myths that grew up around the production and reception of the great medieval poem. Also available as Open Access.
Download or read book Reading Piers Plowman written by Emily Steiner and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-09 with total page 277 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reading 'Piers Plowman' is an indispensable scholarly guide to a magnificent - and notoriously difficult - medieval poem. With 'Piers Plowman', the fourteenth-century poet William Langland proved that English verse could be at once spiritually electrifying and intellectually rigorous, capable of imagining society in its totality while at the same time exploring heady ideas about language, theology and culture. In her study of Piers Plowman, Emily Steiner explores how Langland's ambitious poetics emerged in dialogue with contemporary ideas; for example, about political counsel and gender, the ethics of poverty, Christian and pagan learning, lordship and servitude, and the long history of Christianity. Lucid and comprehensive, Steiner's study teaches us to stay alert to the poem's stunning effects while still making sense of its literary and historical contexts.
Download or read book Earthly Honest Things written by A. V. C. Schmidt and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2012-03-15 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Earthly Honest Things brings together the complete shorter writings of a leading international authority on William Langland. Of A. V. C. Schmidt’s recent two-volume Piers Plowman: A Parallel Text Edition, Derek Pearsall has said in Speculum that ‘By any standards, it is a monumental achievement … resolute, patient, deeply learned … magisterial. … Schmidt … is always interesting and writes with a controlled passion.’ Lawrence Warner in The Medieval Review has called this edition ‘nothing short of awe-inspiring’ and Andrew Galloway in The Yearbook of Langland Studies has noted how ‘under Schmidt’s brilliant attention to the poem’s scenic and poetic originality, an editorial and literary attentiveness shines luminously throughout.’ Including four that are completely new, these twenty-five pieces cover a wide range of topics, from critical essays on the poem’s imagery, structure, themes and intellectual and literary background (including the philosophical, devotional and mystical traditions) to more technical studies of its text and metre. The previously published essays have been thoroughly revised, updated and cross-referenced, and are provided with a full Bibliography and an Index. Together they represent an indispensable companion to the poem for Langland specialists and an exciting introduction for students to one of the most challenging and rewarding masterpieces of medieval English literature.
Download or read book The Philosophy of Piers Plowman written by David Strong and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-04-26 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines William Langland’s late medieval poem, The Vision of Piers Plowman, in light of contemporary intellectual thought. David Strong argues that where the philosophers John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham revolutionize the view of human potential through their theories of epistemology, ethics, and freedom of the will, Langland vivifies these ideas by contextualizing them in an individual’s search for truth and love. Specifically, the text ponders the intersection between reason and the will in expressing love. While scholars have consistently noted the text’s indebtedness to these higher strains of thought, this is the first book-length study in over thirty years that explores the depth of this interconnection, and the only one that considers the salience of both Scotus and Ockham. It is essential reading for medieval literary specialists and students as well as any cultural historian who desires to augment their knowledge of truth and love.
Download or read book Piers Plowman and the Poetics of Enigma written by Curtis A. Gruenler and published by University of Notre Dame Pess. This book was released on 2017-04-30 with total page 636 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Curtis Gruenler proposes that the concept of the enigmatic, latent in a wide range of medieval thinking about literature, can help us better understand in medieval terms much of the era’s most enduring literature, from the riddles of the Anglo-Saxon bishop Aldhelm to the great vernacular works of Dante, Chaucer, Julian of Norwich, and, above all, Langland’s Piers Plowman. Riddles, rhetoric, and theology—the three fields of meaning of aenigma in medieval Latin—map a way of thinking about reading and writing obscure literature that was widely shared across the Middle Ages. The poetics of enigma links inquiry about language by theologians with theologically ambitious literature. Each sense of enigma brings out an aspect of this poetics. The playfulness of riddling, both oral and literate, was joined to a Christian vision of literature by Aldhelm and the Old English riddles of the Exeter Book. Defined in rhetoric as an obscure allegory, enigma was condemned by classical authorities but resurrected under the influence of Augustine as an aid to contemplation. Its theological significance follows from a favorite biblical verse among medieval theologians, “We see now through a mirror in an enigma, then face to face” (1 Cor. 13:12). Along with other examples of the poetics of enigma, Piers Plowman can be seen as a culmination of centuries of reflection on the importance of obscure language for knowing and participating in endless mysteries of divinity and humanity and a bridge to the importance of the enigmatic in modern literature. This book will be especially useful for scholars and undergraduate students interested in medieval European literature, literary theory, and contemplative theology.
Download or read book Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law written by Arvind Thomas and published by University of Toronto Press. This book was released on 2019-03-07 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is a medieval truism that the poet meddles with words, the lawyer with the world. But are the poet's words and the lawyer's world really so far apart? To what extent does the art of making poems share in the craft of making laws, and vice versa? Framed by such questions, Piers Plowman and the Reinvention of Church Law in the Late Middle Ages examines the mutually productive interaction between literary and legal "makyngs" in England's great Middle English poem by William Langland. Focusing on Piers Plowman's preoccupation with wrongdoing in the B and C versions, Arvind Thomas examines the versions' representations of trials, confessions, restitutions, penalties, and pardons. Thomas explores how the "literary" informs and transforms the "legal" until they finally cannot be separated. Thomas shows how the poem's narrative voice, metaphor, syntax and style not only reflect but also act upon properties of canon law, such as penitential procedures and authoritative maxims. Langland's mobilization of juridical concepts, Thomas insists, not only engenders a poetics informed by canonist thought but also expresses an alternative vision of canon law from that proposed by medieval jurists and today's medievalists.
Download or read book The Lost History of Sextus Aurelius Victor written by Justin Stover and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-31 with total page 553 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A radical rewriting of the history of fourth-century Latin literature This book rediscovers a lost history of the Roman Empire, written by Sextus Aurelius Victor (ca. 320-390) and demonstrates for the first time both the contemporary and lasting influence of his historical work. Though little regarded today, Victor is the best-attested historian of the later Roman Empire, read by Jerome and Ammianus, honoured with a statue by the pagan Emperor Julian and appointed to a prestigious prefecture by the Christian Theodosius. Through careful analysis of the ancient evidence, including newly discovered material, this book re-examines the two short imperial histories attributed to Victor in the manuscripts, known today as the Caesares and the Epitome de Caesaribus, and discusses a wide range of both canonical and neglected authors and texts, from Sallust and Tacitus to Eunapius and the Historia Augusta. By providing a new account of the original scope and scale of Victor’s Historia, this book revolutionises our understanding of the writing of history in late antiquity. Not only does it have profound implications for the transmission of Classical texts in the Middle Ages and the history of Classical scholarship, but it also solves some of the enduring mysteries of later Latin literature.
Download or read book Approaches to Teaching Langland s Piers Plowman written by Thomas A. Goodmann and published by Modern Language Association. This book was released on 2018-12-01 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A series of dream visions, Piers Plowman is a moral reckoning of the whole of medieval England, in which every part of society--from church and king to every sort of "folk"--is considered in the light of the narrator's interpretation of Christian revelation. The Middle English poem, rich and beautiful, is a particular challenge to teach: it exists in three versions, lacks a continuous narrative, is written in a West Midlands dialect, weaves a complex allegory, and treats complicated social and political issues, such as labor, Lollardy, and popular uprising. Part 1 of this volume, "Materials," discusses the different versions, critical and classroom editions, and translations of the poem, as well as the many secondary sources. Part 2, "Approaches," helps students engage with the poem's versification, understand its protagonist and its treatment of poverty and equity, and discern connections to the work of other medieval poets, such as Dante and Chaucer.
Download or read book Piers Plowman and the Medieval Discourse of Desire written by Fellow of King's College Cambridge and Newton Trust Lecturer in English Nicolette Zeeman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-04-20 with total page 38 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious study links William Langland's great poem Piers Plowman to wider medieval enquiries into the nature of intellectual and spiritual desire. Zeeman's radical approach opens up a completely fresh reading of Piers Plowman and sheds light on the history of medieval psychology.
Download or read book Word and Self Estranged in English Texts 1550 1660 written by Philippa Kelly and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2010 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: All of the essays in this collection investigate and extrapolate understandings of the strange. In presenting contrasts and analogies between diverse kinds of estrangement, the volume reveals an interplay of thematic and stylistic discourses that sheds new light on the place of word and self in English Renaissance writings, and offers a vital reinterpretation of early modern texts.
Download or read book Piers the Plowman and Its Sequence written by John Matthews Manly and published by . This book was released on 1908 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Piers Plowman written by Andrew Cole and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-02-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Piers Plowman has long been considered one of the greatest poems of medieval England. Current scholarship on this alliterative masterpiece looks very different from that available even a decade ago. New information about the manuscripts of the poem, new historical discoveries, and new investigations of its literary, cultural and theoretical scope have fundamentally altered the very meaning of Langland's art. This Companion thus critically surveys traditional scholarship, with the aim of recuperating its best insights, and it ventures forth into newer areas of inquiry attuned to questions of social setting, institutional context, intellectual and literary history, theory, and the revitalized fields of codicology and paleography. By proceeding through chapters that offer cumulatively wider views as well as stand-alone analyses of topics most crucial to understanding Piers Plowman, this Companion gives serious students and seasoned scholars alike up-to-date knowledge of this intricate and beautiful poem.
Download or read book The Piers Plowman Histories written by Margaret R. Keary and published by . This book was released on 1917 with total page 524 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
