This collection of newly written essays provides a fresh examination of some of the issues central to the study of this poem, including an exploration of its relevance to contemporary literary theory and to 14th century culture and ideology.

William Langland's Piers Plowman is one of the major poetic monuments of medieval England and of world literature. Probably composed between 1372 and 1389, the poem survives in three distinct versions. It is known to modern readers largely through the middle of the three, the so-called B-text. Now, George Economou's verse translation of the poet's third version makes available for the first time in modern English the final revision of a work that many have regarded as the greatest Christian poem in our language. Langland's remarkable powers of invention and his passionate involvement with the spiritual, social, and political crises of his time lay claim to our attention, and demand serious comparison with Dante's Divine Comedy. Economou's translation preserves the intensity of the poet's verse and the narrative energy of his alliterative long line, the immediacy of the original's story of the quest for salvation, and the individuality of its language and wordplay.

Gale Researcher Guide for: William Langland's Piers Plowman is selected from Gale's academic platform Gale Researcher. These study guides provide peer-reviewed articles that allow students early success in finding scholarly materials and to gain the confidence and vocabulary needed to pursue deeper research.

The monograph series Oxford Studies in Medieval Literature and Culture showcases the plurilingual and multicultural quality of medieval literature and actively seeks to promote research that not only focuses on the array of subjects medievalists now pursue - in literature, theology, and philosophy, in social, political, jurisprudential, and intellectual history, the history of art, and the history of science - but also that combines these subjects productively. It offers innovative studies on topics that may include, but are not limited to, manuscript and book history; languages and literatures of the global Middle Ages; race and the post-colonial; the digital humanities, media and performance; music; medicine; the history of affect and the emotions; the literature and practices of devotion; the theory and history of gender and sexuality, ecocriticism and the environment; theories of aesthetics; medievalism. The Arts of Disruption: Allegory and Piers Plowman offers a series of new readings of the allegorical poem Piers Plowman: but it is also a book about allegory. It argues not just that there are distinctively disruptive 'arts' that occur in allegory, but that allegory, because it is interested in the difficulty of making meaning, is itself a disruptive art. The book approaches this topic via the study of five medieval allegorical narrative structures that exploit diegetic conflict and disruption. Although very different, they all bring together contrasting descriptions of spiritual process, in order to develop new understanding and excite moral or devotional change. These five structures are: the paradiastolic 'hypocritical figure' (such as vices masked by being made to look like 'adjacent' virtues), personification debate, violent language and gestures of apophasis, narratives of bodily decline, and grail romance. Each appears in a range of texts, which the book explores, along with other connected materials in medieval rhetoric, logic, grammar, spiritual thought, ethics, medicine, and romance iconography. These allegorical narrative structures appear radically transformed in Piers Plowman, where the poem makes further meaning out of the friction between them. Much of the allegorical work of the poem occurs at the points of their intersection, and within the conceptual gaps that open up between them. Ranging across a wide variety of medieval allegorical texts, the book shows from many perspectives allegory's juxtaposition of the heterogeneous and its questioning of supposed continuities.

One man's dream of a better society... PIERS PLOWMAN stands at the centre of medieval English literature along with Chaucer's CANTERBURY TALES, which in many ways it complements. A weary wanderer falls asleep and dreams of a tower and a deep dungeon, and in between the whold of humanity pursuing its business and pleasure...but his dream becomes a profound vision of redemption, in which the corruptions and injustices that occur daily are laid open with passionate truthfulness in poetry that combines vigorous realism and probing argument with moments of epic sublimity and lyrical beauty. Edited by AVC Schmidt of Balliol College, Oxford, this is the B-Text. 'A marvel of comprehension' Derek Pearsall

The paperback edition, in four volumes, of this standard work will make it readily available to students.The scope of the work makes it valuable as a work of reference, connecting one period with another and placing each author clearly in the setting of his time.Reviewing the first edition, The Times Literary Supplement commented: 'in inclusiveness and in judgment it has few rivals of its kind'.This first volume covers The Middle Ages (to 1500) in two sections: The Old English Period (to 1100) by Kemp Malone (John Hopkins University), and The Middle English Per.

An allegorical satire on alliterative verse, describing the vision of the 14th-century poet who falls asleep in the Malvern Hills. Langland covers all aspects of political and theological debate, and echoing common sentiments in its satire of the corrupt church, especially the Friars.

This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ The Vision Of Piers The Plowman; Issue 18 Of King's Classics William Langland Walter William Skeat Walter William Skeat A. Moring, 1905