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The detailed and wide-ranging Penn Commentary on "Piers Plowman"
places the allegorical dream-vision of the poem within the
literary, historical, social, and intellectual contexts of late
medieval England, and within the long history of critical
interpretation of the work, assessing past scholarship while
offering original materials and insights throughout. The authors'
line-by-line, section by section, and passus by passus commentary
on all three versions of the poem and on the stages of its multiple
revisions reveals new aspects of the poem's meaning while assessing
and summarizing a complex and often divisive scholarly tradition.
The volumes offer an up-to-date, original, and open-ended guide to
a poem whose engagement with its social world is unrivaled in
English literature, and whose literary, religious, and intellectual
accomplishments are uniquely powerful. The Penn Commentary is
designed to be equally useful to readers of the A, B, or C texts of
the poem. It is geared to readers eager to have detailed experience
of Piers Plowman and other medieval literature, possessing some
basic knowledge of Middle English language and literature, and
interested in pondering further the particularly difficult
relationships to both that this poem possesses. Others, with
interest in poetry of all periods, will find the extended and
detailed commentary useful precisely because it does not seek to
avoid the poem's challenges but seeks instead to provoke thought
about its intricacy and poetic achievements. Covering passus
C.15-19 and B.13-17, Volume 4 of the Penn Commentary on "Piers
Plowman" creates a complete vade mecum for readers, identifying and
translating all Latin quotations, uncovering allusions, providing
full cross-reference to other parts of the poem, drawing in
relevant scholarship, and unraveling difficult passages. Like the
other commentaries in the series, this volume contains an extensive
overview and analysis of each passus, and the subdivisions within,
large and small, and discusses all differences between the two
versions. It pays careful attention to the poem at the literal
level as well as to Latin texts that are analogues or even possible
sources of Langland's thought and it emphasizes the comedy of the
poem, of which these passus offer a number of examples.
The Parisiana poetria, first published around 1220, expounds the
medieval theory of poetry (ars poetica) and summarizes early
thirteenth-century thought about writing. While the text draws on
predecessors such as the Rhetorica ad Herennium, Horace’s Ars
poetica, and work by Geoffrey of Vinsauf, its style and content
reveal the unique experience of its author, John of Garland, a
prominent teacher of the language arts at the University of Paris.
John was also a well-read poet with broad tastes, and his passion
for poetry, as well as for fine prose composition, is on display
throughout the Parisiana poetria. This treatise is the only
thoroughgoing attempt to unite three distinct arts—quantitative
poetry, rhythmic poetry, and prose composition, especially of
letters—under a single set of rules. The sections on low, middle,
and high style, illustrated by his “Wheel of Virgil,” have
attracted wide attention; and his long account of rhymed poetry is
the most complete that has survived. This volume presents the most
authoritative edition of the Latin text alongside a fresh English
translation.
A wide range of new scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. This
collection of essays makes available a wide range of new
scholarship on Chaucer's poetry. Opening essays address the issues
of "Chaucerian representation" and "Chaucerian poetics", arguing
for the multiplicity and complexityof what Chaucer "represents" and
for the importance of his dual Anglo-French background in enabling
him to articulate that complexity. Chaucer's use of Ovidian and
Ciceronian sources and ideas is examined, and his pursuit of
simplicity and suspicion of "delicacy"; the potent issues of
sexuality and spirituality, and money and death (with Chaucer's own
ending and his thoughts on last things) complete the collection.
Contributors: DEREK BREWER, HELEN COOPER, PAUL DOWER, JOHN V.
FLEMING, JOHN HILL, TRAUGOTT LAWLER, CELIA LEWIS, R. BARTON PALMER,
WILLIAM PROVOST, JOHN PLUMMER, WILLIAM ROGERS.
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