Piers Plowman

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

• By (author) William Langland
• Edited by Eric Weiskott