Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review""[A] volume that has earned a place on every Langland scholar's shelves, and will make an important contribution to future work on
Piers Plowman."" *
Speculum *
"Of all the poems of the English Middle Ages,
Piers Plowman is the one that most deserves and needs annotation of the fullest and best possible kind, both because it is a text of unrivaled literary quality and interest, and because it is characteristically knotty and deploys a language of unusual richness, density, and allusiveness. Much of this allusiveness is to areas of learning that are not at every modern reader's fingertips. A particular difficulty is the existence of the poem in three authorial versions of almost desperate complexity. It will be an immense triumph to have a commentary which elucidates their relationships as a matter of policy and not simply as the result of conflating annotation on the different versions." * Derek Pearsall *
"The Penn Commentary series is not for first-time readers or undergraduates to purchase or to read directly, but it will serve as a reference work for teachers prepping class at any level and for advanced scholars pursuing new work on the poem. Lawler's 500-page volume, like the three already published, is a font of knowledge, critical, historical, literary, theological, and bibliographical." *
The Medieval Review *
Table of ContentsNote to the Reader
Preface
C Passus 15; B Passūs 13-14
C Passus 16; B Passūs 14-15
C Passus 17; B Passus 15
C Passus 18; B Passus 16
C Passus 19; B Passus 17
Works Cited
Index
Passages Cited
