Originally published in 1969 Piers Plowman is a collection of 12 original essays by leading academics on Piers Plowman. As a combined volume, this collection forms a substantial introduction and a comprehensive account of the poem, its background and textual problems. The book’s essays reflect the diversity, and vigour of criticism in the field of medieval literature and opens new perspectives in the study of one of its finest poems.
Foreword
Introduction, S.S. Hussey
1 Some Aspects of the Process of Revision in Piers Plowman, G.H. Russell
2. The Tearing of the Pardon, Rosemary Woolf
3. Justice, Kingship and the Good Life in the Second Part of Piers Plowman, P.M. Kean
4. Words, Works and Will: Theme and Structure in Piers Plowman, J.A. Burrow
5. Conscience: The Frustration of Allegory, Priscilla Jenkins
6. Piers and the Image of God in Man, Barbara Raw
7. The Rôle of the Dreamer in Piers Plowman, David Mills
8. Action and Contemplation in Piers Plowman, T.P. Dunning
9. The Langland Country, R.W.V. Elliott
10. Charity in Piers Plowman, W.O. Evans
11. Satire in Piers Plowman, S.T. Knight
12. Chaucer’s Contemporary, J.A.W. Bennett
Notes
Index
Biography
S.S. Hussey