Piers Plowman
A New Annotated Edition of the A-text
By (author) William Langland Edited by Eric Weiskott
Paperback (Published)
(September 2026)
ISBN: 9781804132708
6.14 x 9.21 inches
Price: $29.99
In stock
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. This is the first critically considered edition of the A -text supported by an introduction, side glosses, and on-page explanatory notes.
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.
Preface
Acknowledgements
Abbreviations
Introduction
Why the A-text?
Title
Author
Dialect
Metre
Genre and macrostructure
Sources
Manuscript circulation and reception
Unresolved questions in contemporary study of Piers Plowman
The present edition
Thematic notes
Note on spelling
Note on pronunciation
Note on the subjunctive mood
Note on the notes
Glossary of common words and affixes
WILLIAM LANGLAND, PIERS PLOWMAN (A-TEXT)
Appendix A. Passus 12: The discourse of Clergy and Scripture continued; Hunger, Fever, and Death; John But’s eulogy
Appendix B. Two passages new in the B revision
Appendix C. Substantial differences from Kane’s text
Bibliography
Index
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.
- By (author) William Langland
- Edited by Eric Weiskott
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