Despite the recent outpouring of scholarship on "Piers Plowman,"
Lawrence Warner contends, we know much less about the poem's
production, transmission, and readership than one might think. When
did William Langland write each of the three versions of the poem,
and when did they enter wide circulation? What role did scribes and
other agents play in these processes? "The Lost History of "Piers
Plowman"" engages with these questions to bring about a fundamental
shift in our understanding of the genesis and development of the
Middle English poem.According to received history, the poem exists
in three distinct, chronological versions, the A, B, and C texts,
with most scholars agreeing that Langland completed the B text--the
version most familiar to modern readers--around 1377-78.
Challenging much of the prevalent wisdom about the poem, Warner
argues that the received B text is not an integral poem aligned
with a single author but, rather, two groups of manuscripts, each
of which, because of scribal activities, takes on varying amounts
of what we now call C version matter. Through close textual
analysis, he reveals that the B text is a conflation of an ur-B
text with a collection of passages that belong to the C version of
circa 1390, demonstrating that the circulation of the C text
actually predates that of the B."The Lost History of "Piers
Plowman"" is a groundbreaking and provocative work that establishes
an entirely new paradigm for the study of one of the central works
of Middle English literature. It will be of interest to scholars
and students of textual studies, editorial theory, and medieval
history.
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