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Piers Plowman and its Manuscript Tradition (York Manuscript and Early Print Studies) by Sarah Wood
English | August 16, 2022 | ISBN: 1914049071 | True EPUB/PDF | 248 pages | 10/5.2 MB
The fifty-plus surviving manuscripts of William Langland's Piers Plowman cast important light on the early public life of this central Middle English work, but they have been relatively neglected by scholarship. This first full study of the subject examines the textual variants, marginal rubrics and companion texts in the manuscripts. It illuminates a reception quite distinct from the reformist poems written by Langland's imitators in "the Piers Plowman tradition". It reveals how the earliest scribes devised various traditional forms of presentation that proved remarkably durable in the poem's subsequent reception, even surviving into the age of print.