William Langland

Piers Plowman (eBook, ePUB)

A New Annotated Edition of the A-text
Redaktion: Weiskott, Eric

• Format: ePub

Produktbeschreibung

The earliest version of William Langland's Piers Plowman shows this elusive and centrally important fourteenth-century poet inventing the forms that his life's work will take. Piers Plowman is a sinuous cycle of dream visions in alliterative verse comprehending many aspects of medieval English culture from tavern life, plague, homelessness, and labour politics to religious devotion and theological controversy. At once socially capacious and spiritually electrifying, Langland's poem was an instant bestseller in its own time and has provoked strong reactions from the fourteenth century to the present.

At under 2,500 lines, the A-text is significantly more compact than the later B- and C-texts, yet it contains much of the poetic thinking that Langland would elaborate in the longer versions. The poem proceeds as a spiritual quest, undertaken by the dreamer Will, to discover how to save his soul, reform church and society, and attain an ethical mode of life in this world. The action oscillates between the cultivated fields of England's West Midlands and the commotion of London and Westminster.

Piers Plowman poses both textual and interpretative difficulties. This is the first critically considered edition of the A-text supported by an introduction, side glosses, and on-page explanatory notes with undergraduate, postgraduate, and scholarly readers in mind.

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Produktdetails

• Verlag: University of Exeter Press
• Seitenzahl: 224
• Erscheinungstermin: 14. Oktober 2025
• Englisch
• ISBN-13: 9781804132159
• Artikelnr.: 74033261

Autorenporträt

Eric Weiskott is Professor of English at Boston College. He is the author most recently of Meter and Modernity in English Verse, 1350-1650 (2021) and English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition and Literary History (2016). He is an editor of the Yearbook of Langland Studies.

Inhaltsangabe

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments deletev
Introduction
The Identity of the Author
Prologue delete21
Step I delete28
Step II delete35
Step III delete42
Step IV delete53
Step V delete59
Step VI delete78
Step VII delete88
Step VIII delete96
Step IX delete100
Step X
Step XI
Step XII
Step XIII
Step XIV
Step XV
Step XVI
Step XVII
Step XVIII
Step XIX
Step XX
Selected Bibliography
Index