The Myth of Piers Plowman: Constructing a Medieval Literary Archive
Addressing the history of the production and reception of the great medieval poem, Piers Plowman, Lawrence Warner reveals the many ways in which scholars, editors and critics over the centuries created their own speculative narratives about the poem, which gradually came to be regarded as factually true. Warner begins by considering the possibility that Langland wrote a romance about a werewolf and bear-suited lovers, and he goes on to explore the methods of the poem's localization, and medieval readers' particular interest in its Latinity. Warner shows that the 'Protestant Piers' was a reaction against the poem's oral mode of transmission, reveals the extensive eighteenth-century textual scholarship on the poem and contextualizes its first modernization. This lively account of Piers Plowman challenges the way the poem has traditionally been read and understood. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Books Online and via Knowledge Unlatched.
Lawrence Warner is Senior Lecturer in Medieval English at King's College London and Director of the International Piers Plowman Society. His book, The Lost History of 'Piers Plowman': The Earliest Transmission of Langland's Work (2011), received Honorable Mention for the 2013 Richard J. Finneran Award of the Society for Textual Scholarship.
Author: Lawrence Warner (King's College London)
Format: Hardback, 239 pages, 156mm x 235mm, 470 g
Published: 2014, Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom
Genre: Literary Studies: Textbooks & Study Guides
Addressing the history of the production and reception of the great medieval poem, Piers Plowman, Lawrence Warner reveals the many ways in which scholars, editors and critics over the centuries created their own speculative narratives about the poem, which gradually came to be regarded as factually true. Warner begins by considering the possibility that Langland wrote a romance about a werewolf and bear-suited lovers, and he goes on to explore the methods of the poem's localization, and medieval readers' particular interest in its Latinity. Warner shows that the 'Protestant Piers' was a reaction against the poem's oral mode of transmission, reveals the extensive eighteenth-century textual scholarship on the poem and contextualizes its first modernization. This lively account of Piers Plowman challenges the way the poem has traditionally been read and understood. This title is available as Open Access on Cambridge Books Online and via Knowledge Unlatched.
Lawrence Warner is Senior Lecturer in Medieval English at King's College London and Director of the International Piers Plowman Society. His book, The Lost History of 'Piers Plowman': The Earliest Transmission of Langland's Work (2011), received Honorable Mention for the 2013 Richard J. Finneran Award of the Society for Textual Scholarship.