The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 4 : : C Passūs 15-19; B Passūs 13-17 / / Traugott Lawler.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2018 English
• VerfasserIn: Lawler, Traugott,
• Place / Publishing House: Philadelphia : : University of Pennsylvania Press, , [2018]; ©2018
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (520 p.)
• Other title: Frontmatter --; Contents --; Note to the Reader --; Preface --; C Passus 15; B Passu¯s 13–14 --; C Passus 17; B Passus 15 --; C Passus 18; B Passus 16 --; C Passus 19; B Passus 17 --; Works Cited --; Index --; Passages Cited
• Format: Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
• ISBN: 9780812295122; 9783110604252; 9783110603255; 9783110604184; 9783110603187; 9783110606638
• DOI: 10.9783/9780812295122
• Access: restricted access
• Hierarchical level: Monograph
• Statement of Responsibility: Traugott Lawler.

The detailed and wide-ranging Penn Commentary places the allegorical dream-vision of Piers Plowman within the literary, historical, social, and intellectual contexts of late medieval England, and within the long history of critical interpretation of the poem, 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 in 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.Volume 4, by Traugott Lawler—covering passūs C.15-19 and B.13-17, the A version having ended earlier—creates a complete vade mecum for readers, identifying and translating all Latin "ations, uncovering allusions, providing full cross-reference to other parts of the poem, drawing in relevant scholarship, and unraveling difficult passages. Like the other commentaries, 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 passūs offer a number of examples.