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
- By (author) William Langland
- Edited by Eric Weiskott
Other Titles in this Series
Similar Books
A Late Antique Harrowing of Hell and Its Medieval Reception
Eusebius of Alexandria's Sermons 15 and 17 (CPG 5524; 5526) and their Latin Rewritings
Volume 99
Behind the Scenes of Medieval Roofs
An Overview of the Roofing Systems of Italian Churches
Volume 90
Drunk the Potion, No Whit Charmed
The Doctrine of Pure and Perfect Souls from Iamblichus to Damascius
Innovation and Medieval Communities
The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)
Volume 63
Late Antique villae in the Balkans (3rd–7th c. AD): Current Research Questions and Perspectives
HAEMUS Companion to the Late Antique Balkans 1
Volume 4
Linguistic and Cultural Dynamics in a Frontier Society
New Perspectives on Northeastern Bavaria and Western Bohemia in the Early Middle Ages
Volume 9
Medieval Debates on Foreknowledge: Future Contingents, Prophecy, and Divination
Acts of the XXVII Annual Colloquium of the SIEPM, Trento 12-15 September 2023
Volume 31
Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia
History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)
Nurturing the Elite
Representations of Drinking, Eating, and Religious Vessels in Palmyrene Funerary Iconography
Volume 13
Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)
Volume 10
Tradition, Interpretation, and Change
Developments in the Liturgy of Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenaz
Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages
Studies from Western Europe and North Africa
Volume 44
After Life in Roman Paganism. L’Égypte des astrologues. Les Mages hellénisés
Introductions historiographiques
Volume 7
