Piers Plowman: An Introduction (Second, revised edition) (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies) - Softcover

James Simpson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0859898032 ISBN 13: 9780859898034

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2007

Synopsis

This book provides an accessible, concise and intellectually stimulating introduction and guide to one of the richest, most challenging poems of pre-Reformation English. New to the internationally-renowned ""Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies"" series, James Simpson's indispensable guide to Piers Plowman has been fully revised for this reissue. As any teacher of the poem knows, teaching Piers Plowman is massively facilitated by a reliable introductory guide providing both information and interpretation. This book does just that. Its main aim is to demonstrate to undergraduate readers the centrality of Piers Plowman in any account of the literary and cultural history of the later English Middle Ages. Piers Plowman's principal project is the re-imagination of a vernacular Church; the text questions the culture within which it is anchored and moves towards an active re-imagination of social and religious institutions. Simpson's book demonstrates how the poem's historical significance is embedded in its formal choices. This is a truly introductory guide to Piers Plowman notable for its clarity, its intellectual subtlety and its originality. Piers Plowman is a key medieval undergraduate text, both for its literary value and its religious significance. This full revision of the book incorporates the best new scholarship on Piers since the original 1990 edition.

About this title

About the Author

James Simpson is Douglas P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard University. He has contributed to The Norton Anthology of English Literature and co-edited the Yearbook of Langland Studies. He is the author of Reform and Cultural Revolution (2002) and Burning to Read: English Fundamentalism and its Reformation Opponents (2007).

Edition details

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0859898032
• ISBN 13: 9780859898034
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256
• Editor: Vincent Gillespie, Marion Glasscoe, Michael Swanton