ANNUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY*

1987

Jump to Book Reviews

1. Adams, Robert. "Annual Bibliography 1985." YLS 1 (1987): 161-73.

Thirty annotated items plus a list of book reviews.

2. Aers, David. "The Good Shepherds of Medieval Criticism." Southern Review (Adelaide) 20 (1987): 168-85.

The medieval English world was one of social, economic, and class conflict, not one of quiet hierarchies and unquestioned traditional beliefs. B. 6, the plowing of the half-acre, ought more appropriately to be called "labour disputes and strikes on the manor"; it dramatizes the strivings of the rural workers, here redefined by WL as wasters, against their employers and the Statute of Laborers. The wasters are characterized by their self-agency in a fashion quite the opposite of the deferential, idealized poor. The encounter is resolved in the gentry's perception of the limits of their own power and in WL's desperate hope for a subsistence crisis. The workers, Piers laments, have not internalized the employers' work ethos. PP1 demonstrates it is "not ... everywhere equal to the greatest force and to all the consequences of its questions."

3. Bishop, Ian. "Relatives at the Court of Heaven: Contrasted Treatments of an Idea in Piers Plowman and Pearl." Stokes and Burton (no. 60 below) 111-18.

Both PPl and Pearl exploit the two closely related fourteenth-century meanings of court, as "court of law" and "administrative and residential headquarters of a monarch"; and both poems develop the notion that possessing relatives in the heavenly court gives one an advantage in gaining admission there. In B.5.625-29, Piers tells the pilgrims that anyone who is a relative of the seven virtues guarding the seven posterns of Heaven will be handsomely received; for others it will be difficult indeed. But lines 635-36 indicate that as a result of the Incarnation God is related to all sinners, a lesson lost on the prostitute at the end of the passus who hopes to gain entry by claiming kinship with the Pardoner, rather than by uttering the password demanded by Amend-you. Pearl similarly exposes the limitations of the overly literal-minded attitudes toward spiritualia seen in the dreamer's vain hope that he can join his daughter across the stream at the end of the poem.

4. Boitani, Piero, and Anna Torti, eds. Intellectuals and Writers in Fourteenth Century Europe. The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1984. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag; Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986.

See nos. 43, 56 below.

5. Brewer, Charlotte. "The Textual Implications of the Z-Text." D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1986, cited by Schmidt (no. 54 below) 149.

6. Brody, Brigid. "Language and Form in Fourteenth-Century English Vision Literature." DAI 46 (1986): 1935A.

7. Brooks, Harold F. "What Happens in Piers Plowman and Why." Durham University Journal 78 (1985): 51-63.

Basically a summary of the poem for modern readers, who face two obstacles to understanding: (1) unfamiliarity with Middle English, (2) "the difficulty of following the progression of the poem."

8. Camille, Michael. "Labouring for the Lord: The Ploughman and the Social Order in the Luttrell Psalter." Art History 10 (1987): 423-54.

Incidental references to PPl in a study of the Luttrell Psalter from the perspective of the semiotics of class representation, specifically with the drawing of the plowman, driver, and team (fol. 170r) considered as a scene highly responsive to particular fourteenth-century English social experiences, though rendered neither realistically in the narrow sense nor from the peasants' point of view. Whereas most documents mention eight beasts pulling the plow, the illustration shows four oxen only, a detail explained allegorically in C.21.261-65. The plowman as a symbol of the Good Christian is traced to such texts as Prov. 20:4, 1 Cor. 9: 10, and Isa. 28:24-29. Contrasts the drawing of the plowing scene with motto "God spede the plow" from MS. Camb. Trin. Coll. R.3.14 with the image of Gain in the Holkham Bible Picture Book, the latter as an image of the disturbance of order. The marginalia of the Luttrell Psalter are addressed to an audience of clergy and aristocracy; WL writes for a different audience, although his sympathy for the poor is balanced by an attack on society's wasters.

9. Camille, Michael. "The Language of Images in Medieval England, 1200-1400." Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400. Ed. Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binsky. London: Royal Academy of Arts; London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987. 33-40.

Incidental references to B.7.132 and B.12.186-91 (Piers learning literacy from Abstinence the Abbess, felons saved from the gallows by being able to read Ps. 16).

10. Condon, Marjorie Anne. "Beyond Despair: The Way of Salvation in Piers Plowman." DAI 48 (1987): 927A.

11. Cooper, Helen. "Langland's and Chaucer's Prologues." YLS 1 (1987): 71-81.

Argues Chaucer's knowledge of the A text. Sees the differences between A.Prol. and Chaucer's General Prologue as often exaggerated: the dream allegory of PPl often turns literal, while Chaucer's poem moves from comparative naturalism in the General Prologue to overt art and fiction in the tales, and Chaucer's stress on the individual must be considered in terms of estates conventions. A.Prol. presents more coherent estates enumeration than the B and C texts, and is thus structurally closer to Chaucer's Prologue (twenty-seven and thirty estates, respectively). Both works include figures not standard in the genre (e.g., Pardoner and Cook, with the latter in both works placed at the end of a list of assorted burgesses). Of the more expected figures found in both poems, there is a generous coincidence of detail (e.g., the Merchant's appearance of wealth and the similarities of plowman figures, which are not sanctioned by the estates tradition). A.Prol.46-69 suggests how a pilgrim-story collection could be generated. WL's poem gains coherence and direction as pilgrims understand their pilgrimage is to Truth, while the Canterbury Tales becomes more diverse. Chaucer begins with a moral ideal at the top of society; whereas WL distinguishes between good secular and religious lives, Chaucer conflates the two in the ideal triad of Knight-Parson-Plowman. The appearance of moral neutrality in the General Prologue is dropped in the Parson's Tale, which suggests that one can move from one estate to another, from sin to penitence, just as in A. 7 where individual vocations are subordinated to the collective search for Truth. Nevertheless, Chaucer, unlike WL, elevates moral schizophrenia into an artistic principle, and there is in his poem no figure like Piers who reconciles God and the world.

12. Cross, Sally Joyce. "The Image of God and the Manual Arts in Piers Plowman." DAI 48 (1987): 123A.

13. Despres, Denise Louise. "Franciscan Spirituality: Vision and the Authority of Scripture." DAI 46 (1986): 3026A-27A.

14. DiMarco, Vincent, "Annual Bibliography 1986." YLS 1 (1987): 174-89.

15. Donner, Morton. "Agent Nouns in Piers Plowman." ChauR 21 (1987): 374-82.

WL's unusually frequent use of agent nouns (c. 100 different ones in the A text, plus sixty others in B and thirty others in C) emphasizes the breadth and diversity of human experience, and vivifies that experience by casting it in terms of agency. In dramatizing the worst features of society, WL compresses a wide range of social criticism in the form of agents who pursue evil occupations. Allegorical figures are regularly identified in terms of activities performed, in demonstrating that the ideas they personify operate in the world outside the poem. Etymologically, the agent nouns split rather evenly between Romance adaptations and native derivations, with a few derived from Romance roots in English. Morphologically, they are formed mainly on verb rather than noun roots, with a large proportion derived from verbs in their general sense rather than in some specialized senses (e.g., beginner vs. outrider).

16. Dove, Mary. The Perfect Age of Man's Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. 103-24.

WL does not offer the traditional representations of the steady, measured progression of the ages and the assigning of each individual man to his proper place within the scheme; he sees the perfect age of manhood as a hoped for, even expected, condition, but one assuredly achieved only by Christ. For WL the progress of man's life is neither gradual nor predictable; he is most concerned with the moments of crisis when one age confronts another. His myddel age, like Medill Elde in P3A, is not the perfect age of full maturity, but a transitional age most timely for the amendment of life. In C. 11 Pride-of-perfect-living is linked with youth, in a mockery of the idea of perfect age, to be succeeded by old age and poverty. WL's reconstruction of Will's dream in C. 15 shows that the waking Dreamer no longer inhabits any age space: he has left Fortune's territory but is unsure if he will enter Elde's. The reader cannot associate manhood with any stage the Dreamer has experienced.

WL’s "hy tyme" combines the notions of "solemn period of time" and "fully time"; it comes to be associated with manhood in the figure of Christ, who has completed adolescentia, attained manhood, and begun his fight against the Devil. Hy tyme is Christ's entire time on earth; his perfect age was not preceded by imperfection, as was the Dreamer's youth. Piers, a mediator between Christ and the Dreamer, is, like Christ, never young; unlike Christ he experiences old age, partaking fully of "doomed-to-die humankind, just as the Dreamer does." But Piers is not menaced by elde or hindered from carrying out the fruitful actions associated with manhood.

17. Duggan, Hoyt N. "Notes toward a Theory of Langland's Meter." YLS 1 (1987): 41-70.

Although WL's alliterative style shows some distinctive features (e.g., a line with more syllables and often more words per half-line, more frequent rhythmically and semantically "heavy" b-verses than other poets, the occasional employment of short runs of alliteration on the same letter or of complex patterns of verses with interlocked alliteration), he in general wrote to the metrical constraints that governed other ME alliterative poets. The poets wrote exclusively in a limited number of combinations of alliterative patterns in which the minimum requirement is that two full staves (syllables bearing linguistic and metrical stress) must appear in the a-verse and the first stave in the b-verse must be full. The alliteration always falls on a stressed syllable, and the ictus (or lift, i.e., metrically stressed syllable) usually coincides with normal prose phrasal stress. A hierarchy of word classes generally determines which words may appear in ictus. The caesura, which divides the line into two distinct verses, almost always corresponds to a major syntactic disjuncture. Each verse consists usually of two lifts separated by dips, and the b-verse consists of two lifts and from one to three dips, with the verse consisting of from four to eight syllables.

With respect to WL's practice, finds that a qualification of the general rule is necessary: when the alliterative staves are established clearly in the first half-line, a word in the first or second dip of a b-verse from a closed class (i.e., prepositions, conjunctions, some verbs, auxiliaries, pronouns, monosyllabic adverbs) may carry alliteration without bearing metrical stress.

Finds 185 b-verses that appear to have two dips with two or more syllables. Of these, eighty-five are metrically regular when considered in light of the phonology of Chaucerian final -e's, fifty-two others show metrical variants in the MSS., and the degree of conformity to the general rule may in fact approach 98 per cent in the archetype.

18. Duggan, Hoyt N. "The Authenticity of the Z-Text of Piers Plowman: Further Notes on Metrical Evidence." MÆ 56 (1987): 25-45.

Schmidt's "transitional type" (a line with a post-caesural stave that repeats the alliterative sound of the a-verse but without stress and which has two staves bearing stress and alliterating bb at the end) occurs far more frequently in WL's verse than elsewhere in the tradition, and is authorial. All eleven instances of T-type lines found elsewhere in a corpus of 12,806 lines (fifteen poems) are either certainly or most probably scribal errors, whereas two and quite possibly three lines of the Z text are authentic T-types; given the relative infrequency of T-type lines in PPl, this is significant. Moreover, only PPl, PPCreed, and the Z text have authentic lines in which both initial and medial dips contain two or more syllables.

19. Economou, George D. "The Vision's Aftermath in Piers Plowman: The Poetics of the Middle English Dream-Vision." Genre 18 (1985): 313-21.

Studies the ways in which "the dreams of the poem specifically relate to each other in terms of their settings and in terms of their being the immediate sources of the poem." The second and seventh dreams (B and C texts) take place in church; both mark points where the dreamer-narrator speaks of his dreams as a kind of text or book, just as all four of Chaucer's dream-visions conclude with the author involved in writing. Dream-experience in PPl does not cut the dreamer off from reality; rather, it constitutes an essential reality for the poet and serves as a metaphor of the creative process, embracing education, perception, inspiration, and intention.

20. Edwards, A. S. G. "Observations on the History of Middle English Editing." Pearsall (no. 49 below) 34-48, esp. 46-48.

K-D edition of the B text is discussed in the context of the editions of Chaucer by Tyrwhitt, more concerned with the interpretation of MS. evidence than with its presentation, and by Skeat, where editorial method is "further subordinated to the manifestations of editorial genius." K-D's reliance on conjectural emendation and their abandonment of recension emphasize editorial genius in determining authorial intention, even to the extent of establishing readings unsupported by any authority. Their edition is, however, distinguished by a fullness of editorial apparatus, accuracy, and an extensive, candid discussion of editorial intervention.

21. Embree, Dan, and Elizabeth Urquhart, "The Simonie: The Case for a Parallel-Text Edition." Pearsall (no. 49 below) 49-59.

As opposed to PPl and other poems, the three versions of The Simonie demonstrate that the scribes assumed license to rewrite the poem according to their own tastes and biases. Each version has unique inclusions and unique omissions, with only 178 lines (37 per cent of the longest version) common to all three (cf. 53 per cent of C. 1-2 shared by the A and B texts). Each of the versions of The Simonte is probably an independent rewriting of the lost original.

22. Facinelli, Diane Arline. "Law and Government in Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger." DAI 47 (1987): 4081A.

23. Fein, Susanna Greer. "The Middle English Alliterative Tradition of the Allegorical Chanson d'Aventure: A Critical Edition of De Tribus Regibus Mortuis, Somer Soneday, The Foure Leues of the Trewlufe, and Death and Liffe. DAI 47 (1986): 173A.

24. Finke, Laurie A. "Truth's Treasure: Allegory and Meaning in Piers Plowman." Medieval Texts & Contemporag Readers. Ed. Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1987. 51-68.

Allegory, often thought of as yielding stable meanings and unequivocal truths, instead demonstrates the inadequacy of its linguistic formulations by challenging the one-to-one correspondence of words and things. PPl is an allegory "of the impossibility of discovering either significance or truth within language." The reader at first believes that a rational account of the world can be constructed through a translation of one set of terms for another, in Will's belief that word and thing can coincide to create meaning, but Holy Church undermines any easy faith in the precision of allegorical language. Language in the poem, rather than progressing toward an illumination of divine truth, becomes less referential and more reflexive; each gloss leads to more glossing, and the Dreamer is not enlightened. Yet allegory so understood becomes a mode of faith in the poem in an epistemological exploration of the mystery of the Incarnation.

25. Fredell, Joel Willis. "Medieval Portraiture and the Roots of Late Gothic Aesthetics." DAI 47 (1986): 895A.

26. Gainer, Kim Dian. "Prolegomenon to Piers Plowman: Latin Visions of the Otherworld from the Beginnings to the Thirteenth Century." DAI 48 (1987): 131A.

27. Galloway, Andrew. "Two Notes on Langland's Cato: Piers Plowman B.I.88-91; IV.20-23." ELN 25 (1987): 9-13.

Identifies a possible source of B.1.88-91 as Disticha Catonis i..3, the phrasing of which in the poet's concordance-trained mind was conflated with similar passages from Luke. WL understands "Cato" as a non-Christian whose learning is reconciled in the Easter passus with that of Christianity. So too in B.4.20-23, where the equipping of Reason's horse by "Catoun" recalls Jerome's exegesis of Matt. 21:6-7, in which the garments are understood for the soul as the teaching of virtues and the exposition of the Scriptures, without which the Lord will not ride.

28. Goldsmith, Margaret E. 'Will's Pilgrimage in Piers Plowman B. " Stokes and Burton (see no. 60 below) 119-31.

Traces the spiritual progress of Will in recovering the image of God in man to the Epistle of James, the Glossa ordinaria, and Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos. B.15.161-62a evoke, besides the famous image of I Cor. 13:12, James 1:23-24; Will, not yet a "doer" of God's word, fails to recognize both himself and his maker in his looking glass. The Glossa ordinaria on Luke 24:31-32 likewise emphasizes doing, rather than merely hearing the Law; and Will approaches knowledge of Truth through the same figure of the breaking of bread. The mistranslation of B. 10. 3 64 (mechaberis for occides) shows that WL, like James, emphasizes God's mercy for those who have shown mercy. Similarly, Will's misquotation in B. 10.450, 452a emphasizes the fact that Will has obscured the teaching that learning without charity is profitless. Will's sojourn in "the lond of longynge and love" (B. 11.8) is informed by Augustine's understanding of the parable of the Prodigal Son as a separation from God; Augustine's Enarrationes in Psalmos, like James's epistle, exhorts us to active love. Returning from this exile, Will is sustained by Patience's citation of fiat voluntas tua, a sign that Will is conforming himself to God's will. He comes to recognize the Old Adam within himself in recognizing the consequences of his pride and curiosity under Piers's apple tree. What he did not learn from Scripture and Clergy, because he was merely curious, he learns "bi his werkes" of God's love from the Samaritan, a figure identified with Christ.

29. Green, Richard Firth. "The Lost Exemplar of the Z-Text of Piers Plowman and Its 20-Line Pages." MÆ 56 (1987): 307-10.

Questions Kane's criticism of Rigg and Brewer's Z version for failing to appreciate that the "new" lines were really scribal attempts to restore or reconstruct an A-text exemplar that presented illegible or defaced leaves of nineteen to twenty-one lines. Argues in rebuttal that no extant A or B MS. is so generously spaced (the average is around thirty-eight lines per side); that it would be indeed unusual to find leaves disfigured on one side only; and that two of the five lacunae posited by Kane (gaps of eighty-four and sixty-one lines, respectively) are only four lines apart -hence the improbable case of an exemplar that contained four totally illegible sides, followed by one side containing four lines, then three illegible sides.

30. Hill, Thomas D. "Seth the 'Seeder' in Piers Plowman C. 10. 249." YLS 1 (1987): 105-08.

The triple repetition of forms of the word "seed" in C. 10. 249 ("Seth should not permit his seed to 'seed' [i.e., to beget children] with the seed of his brother Cain") is to be understood in light of both the interpretation of Seth's name as (Adam's) seed (Gen. 4:25; cf. Jerome, Liber interpretationis hebralcorum nominum; Isidore, Chronicle) and his biblical role as the man who bears the seed of Adam.

31. Holloway, Julia Bolton. The Pilgrim and the Book.- A Study of Dante, Langland and Chaucer. American University Studies, Series 4: English Language and Literature, vol. 42. New York, Berne, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1987. 69-92, 163-78, and passim.

Sees PPl, The Divine Comedy, and the Canterbury Tales as pilgrim poems informed by the paradigms of Exodus, Psalm 113, and the Emmaus story of Luke 24. The latter, in its liturgical dramatic form as Officlum Peregrinorum, is a speculum stultorum that contrasts exterior and interior sight, folly and wisdom, doubt and faith, lies and truth. Will, dressed in sheepskin like a pilgrim, encounters on the fair field of folk mirror images of himself in tale-telling pilgrims and lazy hermits, in a scene that establishes the pilgrim poet as an unreliable narrator. The contrast between the World (Meed) and God (Holy Church) is developed in the encounter with the carnal palmer and Piers, the true pilgrim, who takes on the role of the Saracen guide to the Holy Land. Will's progress in the poem is from the carnal pilgrimage to the via veritatis.

Will functions as Luke, the palmer as Cleophas, and Piers as Christ of the Emmaus story. WL as a boy in a Benedictine priory could well have sung the part of Luke; Piers's appearance (B. 19.5-8) "peynted al blody" like Christ with a cross before the people, refers to an actor, a priest in the role of Christ in the Easter Officium Peregrinorum. The Emmaus story is echoed again in Conscience and Patience meeting Haukyn, a teller of lying pilgrim fables who mirrors Will's own progress. WL deconstructs his own text by equating minstrelsy (as lying tales) with turpiloquium. Will's education by Anima, the most inward part of his being, supersedes that given by his own imperfect doubles, Thought, Wit, et al.; he is thus able to find and recognize Piers in his soul "in his own and Christ's image."

The allegory of agriculture links the motifs of pilgrimage and story telling (Luke) and pilgrimage and education (Exodus), as Piers, typologically like Abraham and Moses, sees the pilgrimage as honest agricultural labor. The pardon scene echoes the episode of the golden calf. The plowing of the Visio is spiritualized in the allegory of B. 19, where Piers becomes God's plowman. Similarly, the Genesis and Exodus figurae of the Visio are fulfilled in WL's use of the parable of the Good Samaritan, where Piers as Samaritan fulfills and completes Abraham and Moses, and Will is like one left for dead until Christ and Charity can become his savior. Likewise, the pardon is superseded by Moses's Law, and both of these by Book. Both Book and WL's poem are self-consuming artifacts: having served the purpose of guiding pilgrim readers toward salvation, they will themselves pass away.

32. Izydorczyk, Zbigniew. "The Legend of the Harrowing of Hell in Middle English Literature." DAI 47 (1987): 4385A.

33. Justice, Steven Victor. "Religious Crisis and the Poetics of Authority in the Late Middle Ages." DAI 46 (1986): 1936A-37A.

34. Kane, George. "'Good' and 'Bad' Manuscripts: Texts and Critics." SAC Proceedings 2 (1986). Fifth International Congress of the New Chaucer Society. 20-23 March 1986. Philadelphia, PA. Ed. John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan. Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee, 1987. 137-46.

An editor's procedures are necessarily affected by the distinctive situation posed by almost every ME text, the state of the text as a composition (completed, left incomplete, one of a series of revisions), and the state of preservation of the text. Unconscious scribal substitution that produced plausible variations often gives the appearance of intention and design. With both Chaucer and WL the poet's distinctive style and usus scribendi are largely intact and recoverable: the archetypal text of PPl B contained merely 760 unoriginal readings, i.e., corruption in 11 per cent of its 7200 lines. Manuscript traditions originate when an author (or, in the case of the C text, his executor) allows his personal copy to be reproduced, thus losing control of reproduction; such traditions prove that authorial texts are not modern editorial ideas, but tangible, readable objects. Even "bad" MSS. full of scribal substitution are valuable evidence of those historical events an editor wishes to recover.

35. Kaulbach, Ernest N. "The'Vis Imaginativa secundum Avicennam' and the Naturally Prophetic Powers of Ymaginatif in the B-Text of Piers Plowman." JEGP 86 (1987): 496-514.

A continuation of "The 'Vis Imaginativa' and the Reasoning Powers of Ymaginatif in the B-Text of Piers Plowman,"JEGP 84 (1985): 16-29. (See Robert Adams, "Annual Bibliography 1985," YLS 1 [1987]: 167-68.)

The prophetic nature of the "vis imaginativa," first suggested by M. W. Bloomfield, is explained with reference to Avicenna who, like WL in B. 11.320-410 and B. 12.281, describes this faculty as transforming the data of human sensory experience into the matter of revelation in inner and outer dreams. The "vis imaginativa secundum Avicennam" transforms the prophet's abstract moral intuitions into images that impel him to communicate with his society in the hope of reforming it and himself; this parallels the prophetic activities of Ymaginatif in B. 1l- 12 especially. Between 1150 and 1250, Avicenna's psychology was subjected to Christian redaction, in which tradition the "vis imaginativa" was described as both joining true images and separating false images from the true, and impelling the natural prophet to be attracted to the true and repelled by the false, as is also seen in Ymaginatif's effect on Will. Will changes the source of his sensory reasoning power from Thought to Ymaginatif when he is shamed by his rebuke of the Reason in Kynde (B. 11.405). Reason has led Will to recreate Adam's sin of pride; from this point Will "begins to know spiritually from the hypostatization of an animal, sensory power in his own brain." By the end of the inner dream Will has received from Ymaginatif a path toward the kynde knowyng of Dowel: patience. By the beginning of B. 13 Will has accepted both Ymaginatif's deliberative Reason and his motive Reason; awake briefly, when he certifies to himself the truths of the continuing outer dream of B. 12, he is shown to act out the "propria propheta virtutis imaginativae secundum Avicennam."

36. Kinney, Arthur F. John Skelton: Priest as Poet. Chapel Hill and London: University of North Carolina Press, 1987. 5, 10, 13, 171, 176.

Incidental references to PPl in discussion of the dream vision and the Deadly Sins in the Bowge of Court and the "Tunnyng of Elynour Rummyng."

37. Kiser, Lisa. "Elde and His Teaching in The Parlement of the Thre Ages." PQ 66 (1987): 303-14.

P3A offers a critique of all stages of life in order to focus our attention on life after death. Elde is shown to be a seriously flawed character who can formulate impeccable truths; most of his digressions serve to answer his companions' imagery and arguments, yet his motives in sermonizing are based in pride, envy, and ire, and his inordinate fear of death shows his imperfect understanding of death's place in the Christian scheme of things. "Elde is thus a perfect example of a moral physician who needs to heal himself …"

38. Lawton, David. "The Subject of Piers Plowman." YLS 1 (1987): 1-30.

Traditional criticism of PPl is hampered by methodological assumptions and a critical vocabulary that approach the first-person subject as a narrative and discursive continuity, attempt to find a unity and authorial intention through an understanding of the poem's subject and dream-vision genre, and defend the orthodoxy and univalence of WL's work. Modern theory, on the other hand, allows us to approach the text as "concerned with contradictions in the social formation and the subject, and with the discourses of power whose intersection conveys those contradictions," as well as to view the poem as a dialogic text that admits several voices, discourses, and subjectivities, as an analysis of subjectivity itself. First person singular asides in the poem at times appear to belong to the Dreamer, at times to the author, at times to neither. The subject persona is presented with many, sometimes contradictory attributes; he exists as an unstable analogy, standing in metonymic relation to the world in its problems and contradictions. As a character in a narrative, Will responds differently in different discourses: as dreamer, penitent, scholar, etc. As actant Will functions mainly in terms of disjunction and deferment and "the sudden substitution of one sort of discourse for another."

PPl does not move from a failed attempt to reform society to an acknowledgment that social reform is achieved only through reform of the individual, for the poem's values are collective throughout. WL employs monologic penitential manuals in a dialogic fashion, in which they are put in competition with other discourses, and what was designed to mediate subjectivity is itself mediated and de-authorized.

PPl reverses the normal and expected order of its structure, in that it asserts through the inspiration of the poet and the lay mediator Piers that the mediation of divinely sanctioned authority for man to gain transcendent knowledge may not be necessary. As such, there are affinities to the via positiva of late medieval lay piety. WL can be compared with Margery Kempe: the works of both are dialogic accounts of subjectivity; they aim at perfection and have a strongly social concern; they attempt to maintain an uneasy subjection to ecclesiastical power; and they center on subjects who "appear to be preposterous vessels of unmediated divine grace."

39. Lopez, Longino Luis. "The Rhetoric of Reward in Middle English Alliterative Dream Poetry." DAI 46 (1986): 1937A.

40. Matheson, Lister M. "Piers Plowman B. 13.331 (330): Some 'Shrewed' Observations." YLS 1 (1987): 108-16.

B. 13.331 (Skeat; K-D B. 13.330) illustrates how scribes, modern editors, and perhaps even WL revising the corrupt scribal copy of the B text interpreted ambiguity caused by lack of clear punctuation in the original texts. I shrewed has been rendered I-shrewed, ppl. of shreuen, used as an adj. modifying men with the phrase thus turned into a dramatic apostrophe by the Dreamer (Skeat) or so construed grammatically but given to Haukyn as a self-accusation (Wright); more recent editors (K-D and Schmidt) read ysherewed, a first-person preterite form of otherwise unattested ME ishreuen. But the small number of new verbs in ME formed by adding i- to already existing verbs generally and in PPl in particular argues against this. Suggests instead taking I as the 1st pers. sing. pron. and shrewed as the 1st per. pret. of shreuen, as in various MSS. of the poem. As a shepster shere (330) either modifies the verb frete in 330 (Skeat, Schmidt) or the verb of 331b, consistent with the emendation proposed above: "As with a dressmaker's shears I damned and cursed men."

Whereas all B-text MSS. end 330 after my-selue and begin 331 with Wythinne, K-D alone moves withInne to the end of 329, its position in C. All editions take it as modifying frete; and though it is possible it modifies the following verb, meaning that Haukyn cursed men silently and inwardly, there is no evidence in scribal treatments of the line that it was ever so considered.

41. Middleton, Anne. "The Passion of Seint Averoys [B. 13.91]: 'Deuynyng' and Divinity in the Banquet Scene." YLS 1 (1987): 31-40.

Identifies Seint Averoys as Averroes (ordinarily spelled Aueroys in late medieval MSS.). Sees a reference to the philosopher's teaching of the natural basis for knowledge of the supernatural, recalling the persistent charge against the friars of having supplanted moral reason with natural science. Their carnal understanding of moral apologetics - which abandons sacred history for a merely physical science and can turn any natural image into a prophetic sign -is considered an unconscious parody of prophetic illumination.

42. Miller, Jacqueline T. Poetic License: Authorio and Authorship in Medieval and Renaissance Contexts. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. 44-45.

Incidental reference. PPl is illustrative of the late medieval tradition of presenting opposing views of dream visions that call into question not only the dream but the status and values of the auctores cited. By pitting text against text with unresolved results, WL forces the individual either to choose one attitude, reject the tradition and rely on his own judgment, or abstain from taking any position.

43. Minnis, Alastair. "Chaucer's Pardoner and the 'Office of Preacher.'" Boitani and Torti (see 4 above) 88-119, esp. 106.

Incidental references. B.Prol.68 is compared with CTVI.391-94 as examples of how pardoners' usurpation of the office of preacher is identified as a basic fault that gives rise to others. B.13.124 and C.11.132 are considered echoes of the debate, one side of which contended that theology was not truly a science in the Aristotelian sense.

44. Moore, Kenneth Bruce. "Dramatic Elements in Middle English Poetry." DAI 47 (1987): 3435A-36A.

45. Morgan, Gerald. "Langland's Conception of Favel, Guile, Liar, and False in the First Vision of Piers Plowman." Neophil 71 (1987): 626-33.

Corrects MED definition of Favel: Favel is cunning as distinguished from duplicity and not united with it. To Aquinas, cunning (astutia) is a sin of feigned or specious means (ST 2a2ae55.3). Guile, which WL defines with increased precision in successive versions of PP1, has a role subordinate to Favel, in seeing that the schemes of Favel are carried out; this parallels Aquinas's distinction of astutia and dolus (ST 2a2ae55.4). Lying, the intention to express falsehood, is distinguished by Aquinas and WL from duplicity, which has the intention to deceive.

46. Morgan, Gerald. "The Meaning of Kind Wit, Conscience, and Reason in the First Vision of Piers Plowman." MP 84 (1987): 351-58.

Kind Wit is an understanding that is in man naturally, rather than by reasoning; it is the natural understanding of first principles of both the speculative and practical intellect, which serves as the source of the knowledge that Conscience applies to a particular act. As the application of knowledge to act, it is distinguished by Aquinas from synderesis (ST 1 a, 79.13). Unlike synderesis, conscience is fallible. Reason, to WL a ruler and counsellor, stands not for the faculty of intellect but rather for the intellectual virtue of prudence or practical wisdom.

47. Orme, Nicholas. "Langland and Education." History of Education 11 (1982): 251-66.

WL shows the conventional medieval attitude that baptism, not birth, is the chief childhood event. He sees the parents as the most important agents of the children's upbringing, and understands the parents' responsibilities to be those of maintenance, education, discipline (including corporal punishment), and endowment of their children. He is especially sensitive to the hardship of the poor and, like John Bromyard, sees the chief remedy of the situation in private charity. He criticizes the tendencies of apprentices to learn the wicked practices of their masters, not the good ones. WL's recounting of his own childhood and schooling is itself remarkable in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. WL sees the school curriculum centered on Latin; he is especially impressed by the Distichs of Cato. He feels, however, that schoolboys at the time of his writing were not achieving the standards of his youth. He criticizes grammarians who know only Latin and English, yet the grammatical analogy of C.4 shows that he was himself influenced by the rise of English in the schools and the terminology of English grammar that had been called into being. Unlike Chaucer, he shows no interest in specific universities, and his own knowledge of scholastic learning is subject to nagging doubts of its values by the highest Christian standards. He sees the literate often fall short of the illiterate in godliness.

48. Patterson, Lee, "The Logic of Textual Criticism and the Way of Genius: The Kane-Donaldson Piers Plowman in Historical Perspective." Negotiating the Past: The Historical Understanding of Medieval Literature. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987. 77-113.

Revision of an essay of the same title originally published in Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation. Ed. Jerome J. McGann. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. 55-91. (See Robert Adams, "Annual Bibliography 1985," YLS 1 [1987]: 169.)

49. Pearsall, Derek, ed. Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature. Essays from the 1985 Conference at the University of York. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell & Brewer, 1987.

See nos. 20, 21.

50. Revard, Carter. "Title and Auaunced in Piers Plowman B.11.290." YLS 1 (1987): 116-21.

Suggests corrections to the glosses of title and auaunced in B.11.290 and C.13.103 by Schmidt and Pearsall. Title is to be understood here in the sense of "a guarantee of support required (in ordinary cases) by the bishop from a candidate for ordination" (OED, s.v. Title sb., sense 8); auaunced does not mean "promoted to the rank of priest" but refers instead to the fact that a candidate's guarantee of financial solvency, presented at his ordination, testifies that he has found some kind of preferment or advancement (as in OED, s.v. Advance [v.] sense 10; cf. MED, s.v. auancen 3 [a]).

51. Russell, J. Stephen. "Lady Meed, Pardons, and the Piers Plowman Visio." Mediaevalia 8 (1985 [for 1982]): 239-57.

Sees the Visio as a well-intentioned but short-sighted attempt to reform human society rationally. Lady Meed cannot be thought of simply as an unflattering contrast to Holy Church; she is instead a morally neutral figure whose incestuous marriage to False is considered by Theology as the loss of a potential force for good, the "mede mesureless" of God's mercy. Piers and his family enter the poem manifesting a reduction of the God-man relationship to a system of contractual obligations, a religious system of "mesurable hire." Piers's reaction to the pardon shows he realizes that the "ideal social order" of the court is at variance with God's order. God owes no one "mesurable hire"; God's justice cannot be understood or defined, but only because God is "unjustly, measurelessly merciful."

52. Scase, Wendy. "The Anticlerical Tradition in Piers Plowman." D.Phil. thesis, Oxford, 1986; cited by Scase (no. 53 below) 463.

53. Scase, Wendy. "Two Piers Plowman C-Text Interpolations: Evidence for a Second Textual Tradition." N&Q ns 34 (1987): 456-63.

Comparison of the unique versions of passages on false hermits (corresponding to C.9.66-281) and the Ophni and Phineas passage (C.Prol.91-127) in the Ilchester MS. and Huntington Library MS. HM 114 shows these interpolations circulated in a form substantially different from the "received" C text; on the basis of agreements in error, shared shape and content, and shared omissions they cannot be considered independent scribal versions of the received C text. The false hermits passage in these MSS. suggests circulation of this material was cued for insertion but was not added into C text revision. C.5.1-5 (the autobiographical passage) may refer to the false hermits passage as a response to criticism of earlier work.

54. Schmidt, A. V. C. The Clerkly Maker: Langland's Poetic Art. Piers Plowman Studies 4. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell & Brewer, 1987.

Explores the versecraft, diction, and wordplay of WL, here considered an author conscious of being a practitioner of the maker's art (treating serious poetic matters rather than scurrilous material) and a real member of the estate of the clergy (hence concerned with the proper use of language for the glory of God and the good of man). WL defends the activity of making and his own involvement in it in B. 11 and B. 12. He distinguishes his making from "spilling of speech," and as something done for "solace" after study or enjoyment between prayers; thus he redefines in his apologiae the accepted role of both clerk and maker.

As a clerk, WL was as concerned about standards in the vernacular art of making as in the art of Latin versemaking. Although Anima's remarks on the decline of education among the clergy pertain directly to Latin versemaking, his use of the phrase versifye faire (B. 15.372) suggests application in contexts of the vernacular. WL's line consists of not fewer than four and almost never more than five stressed syllables, separated from each other by a varying number of unstressed syllables, and with optional unstressed syllables at the beginning and end of the line. The two half-lines, separated by a caesura, are not always of equal metrical weight. The smooth-flowing effect generated by the alternation of lifts (stressed syllables) and drops (unstressed syllables in which volume is reduced and pitch falls) is sometimes deliberately interrupted by the omission of the dips between lifts. A full stave is a lift bearing both alliteration and stress; a blank stave lacks alliteration. The common pattern aa / ax (with a denoting a full stave and x a blank stave) often is found in an "enriched" variant, aa / aa. The five-lift line aaa / ax (variant aaa / aa) shows how enrichment can have metrical significance in increasing the weight of the line. The blank extended line aax / ax (variant axa / ax) completes the repertoire of the standard line, or Type 1, within whose limits WL achieves variety by drawing on devices of ornament.

Type II lines, of which there are approximately eighty instances in the B text, have three full staves grouped in the a-half (aaa / xx), sometimes with the two lifts of the b-verse alliterating on a second sound (aaa / bb). Type III, a "minimally staved" line that is also found in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and P3A, is of the pattern ax / ax; though the C text often revises such lines, they are probably authorial. An enriched ax / aa variant and one featuring crossed alliteration (ab / ab) are also found.

While "little words" often carry alliteration in PPl, there are very few examples in which such small words carry stress. These small word staves are thus to be considered "mute," with a following syllable carrying the stress. Five of every seven of the B text's mute staves occur in the key position, the first stave of the b-half. A transitional (T-type) line results when a stave is generated through a word alliterating by help of the end-consonant of the word preceding it; this has the effect of heightening the prominence of the b-line lifts. WL is occasionally forced to stress words in a way that probably differs from that of speech or prose; there are approximately seventy-five examples of such "wrenched stress" in the poem. He utilizes enjambment, largely to create an impression of conversational naturalness, on the average of fifteen lines per passus, most often by suspension of the main verb, the subject, or the object. He employs patterns of complex alliteration within individual lines and over two or more lines; the latter may be said to counteract the tendency of enjambment to dissolve the structural autonomy of the individual line. Contrapuntal alliteration (aab / ab) produces greater density of texture within individual lines, and is employed by WL inversely (aba / ab) and in echoic fashion (where the two contrapuntal staves occur at either end of the line, and the first is mute, and echoed by the second). There are over 100 examples of pararhyme in the B text, in which the staves of the a-verse and the b-verse are bound closely by a second alliterating consonant added to each of two words already joined by initial alliteration. Pararhyme in PPl commonly occurs across the caesura; when within the half-line it almost always occurs in the a-verse. WL also employs crosscaesural rhymes, internal half-line rhyme (only in the b-verse), and identical rhyme.

For all his mistrust of the ultimate value of learning as an aid to gaining salvation, WL clearly believes in the necessity for some to be able to construwe; B. 14 in particular shows how necessary, and how difficult, it is "In Englissh ... wel to expounen." The action of "kenning" emblematizes the gap between a carnal and a spiritual understanding of religious truth. To construe WL's words presupposes among his clerkly audience a familiarity with grammatica. Even those Latin quotations that have the character of marginal glosses or footnotes are not extraneous or inessential to the sense. WL's use of macaronic passages, juxtaposing grammatica and the vulgaris locutio, brings together the transcendent and empirical domains.

WL would accept that words operate "sacramentally" in enacting that which they signify, as in the miracle at Cana and in the Eucharist. Through his wordplay he suggests "that ambiguity, the chief (if not the sole) difficulty in 'expouning' proper meanings, is not a feature of the 'vulgar lingo' only but of language itself." His fondness for the pun suggests his attitude toward language as something to be trusted as well as suspected. There are over 180 examples of punning in the B text, and 200 in the C text. WL frequently uses the quasi-pun or chime (annominatio) that relies on almost the same word in a different sense. He also employs the anti-chime, in which another sense of a word is called up, only to be rejected. His great strength as a poet is seen to derive from his not confusing the "right" use of a word (its "lele" use) with its "true" meaning. He exploits two senses of bidden, "to pray to God" and "to beg," as well as the tension between biden and its antichime bidden. And he is particularly conscious of the susceptibility of good to being misused and misdefined; he guards against this by connecting the ethical and property senses of the word with each other and with God.

55. Sherbo, Arthur. "Samuel Pegge, Thomas Holt White, and Piers Plowman." YLS 1 (1987): 122-28.

Reproduces an article on PPl by Samuel Pegge (Gentlemen's Magazine, Nov. 1755, 495) which for the first time discriminated between Crowley's two editions of the poem. Reproduces article from Gentlemen's Magazine, Nov. 1797, 945-46, by Thomas Holt White., calling for a new edition of the work. Lists Thomas Percy, Isaac Reed, Richard Farmer, and Alexander Pope among eighteenth-century men of letters who owned copies of PPl.

56. Schless, Howard H. "Fourteenth-Century Imitatio and Piers Plowman." Boitani and Torti (see 4 above) 164-77.

Examines B.15-17 as illustrative of the pattern and process of imitation in sanctification, a trend in fourteenth-century spirituality informed by Phil. 2:5 and I John 3:2-3, 7, in which likeness through imitation of the divine model when perfectly achieved passes beyond similitude into identification. Hence the identification of Piers with Christ (B. 19.10-14), best understood as the Anointed One rather than the historical Jesus. So too for Will, who imitates Piers, as the latter is a step behind Christ: by B.16 Will has attained the state of Dowel; when Piers seeks to bring down an apple from the Tree of Charity, both characters stand for grace in varying degrees; in B.17 when Will offers himself as a servant to the Samaritan, he approaches the status of Piers as Dobet, and through imitatio he is able to pass through the selva oscura safe from the thief (the Devil). In like manner the poem puts the reader in the position of imitating the imitator Will.

57. Shoaf, R. A. "'Speche That Spire Is of Grace': A Note on Piers Plowman B.9.104." YLS 1 (1987): 128-33.

B.9.104 puns on two senses of spire: "shoot" or "sprout" and "breath," to suggest that for WL speech is the shoot of grace because it is the breath of grace; i.e., the speech of men can say that speech is a shoot or offspring of grace only because of the inspiration of the grace of the Holy Spirit. But since speech is thus capable of multiple meanings, such meanings can be perverted into frivolity or worse. Perhaps influenced by Gregory's Moralia in Job (on Job 33:4), WL's notion of speech as seminal carries the possibility of its being onanistic and polluting (hence perhaps his use of the verb spille in 104). Because language is always potentially metaphoric, it is always potentially impure.

58. Simpson, James. "Spirituality and Economics in Passus 1-7 of the B Text." YLS 1 (1987): 83-103.

Although B.2-4 appear to demonstrate WL's rejection of a profit economy and a system of human relations based on mede (a reward beyond desert) as corrupting both justice and loyalty, he describes the relations between God and man in fundamentally economic terms, often in terms of a profit economy (e.g., B.1,5). This use of economic images finds its model in such passages as Matt. 20:1 ff.; John 4:36; Matt. 6:19-21, 13:44-46; Matt. 18:23-35; and Luke 6:35. WL uses such images when he is specifically rejecting a profit economy in the earthly realm. He draws on the scholastic distinction between absolute, strict merit (meritum de condigno) and relative, conditional merit (meritum de congruo), or reward as wages and reward as gift. In B.3 mercede represents just or condign reward, whereas meed from God is congruent merit. Theology's description of reward from God as mede is that of a gift beyond desert; Piers's wage from God is condign (B.5.542-52). The plowing of the half-acre scene moves from a traditional restatement of feudal ideology to a depiction of Piers as a peasant landholder paying peasant wages on a contractual basis, a relationship of strict equality between merit and reward. The failure of this arrangement suggests that to Langland strict de condigno merit is impossible to attain in the face of God's justice. A conditional reward is required, in which God out of mercy grants the gift of salvation to repentant man.

59. Spearing, A. C. Readings in Medieval Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. 216-45. A revised version of "Langland's Poetry: Some Notes in Critical Analysis." LSE ns 14 (1983): 182-95.

Examines B. 1. 179-209 in terms of WL's use of simple and ordinary diction and the concrete realization of abstract ideas in scenes and objects of daily life; B.5.135-63 as an example of WL's presentation of allegorical formulations that are provisional; and B. 12.131-53 as a characteristic juxtaposition of the prosaic and the wildly imaginative. Sees the Pardon scene as "deconstructive" in that it challenges the link between signifier and signified: Piers tears the pardon in a recognition of its inadequacy as a sign. In B.16, the Tree of Charity scene, the allegory is similarly exploded by the impossibility of its containing a transcendent meaning. God, the transcendent signified, "can be read only through the contradictions and the final exhaustion and evaporation of the human signifier."

60. Stokes, Myra, and T. L. Burton, eds. Medieval Literature and Antiquities: Studies in Honour of Basil Cottle. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer; Wolfeboro, NH: Boydell & Brewer, 1987.

See nos. 3, 28, 65.

61. Tavormina, M. Teresa. "Piers Plowman and the Liturgy of St. Lawrence: Composition and Revision in Langland's Poetry." SP 84 (1987): 245-71.

Examines two C-text revisions, C.2.127-36 and C.17.64-71, in which St. Lawrence (unmentioned in earlier versions) is cited as a counterexample to degenerate churchmen of WL's day. C.2.127-36, like its corresponding B-text lines, affirms the possibility of just payments in an argument for marrying Meed to Truth, but brings a spiritual dimension to the discussion in the mention of Lawrence, who was able to earn meed "an heye." This passage is recast as speech to Simony (rather than to Civil), and the allusion to Lawrence calls attention to the proper relation of spiritual and temporal goods. Use of the term leuyte (L. levita) suggests that WL's source here was the Lawrence liturgy rather than the Lawrence saint-legend, but both traditions offer relevant examples of his meritorious, selfless activity that serve as counterexamples to Simony's involvement in Meed's marriage.

Whereas B.15.326-31 has as its source Ps. 111:9 as well as Paul's use of the line in 2 Cor. 9:8-9, the mention of Lawrence in the C revision of these lines (C.17.64-71) suggests that WL has enriched the allusion through associations with the liturgy of the saint, in which the line from the Psalms is incorporated.

WL's allusions to Lawrence present an exemplary cleric who behaves in exemplary fashion with respect to the administration of ecclesiastical wealth to the poor, the willingness to give up one's life for Christ, a recognition of the proper relation of spiritual and temporal goods, and a concept of meed that is well earned and eternal. References to him also relate, however, to WL's concern for individual reform, "to the call away from the world, the call to perfection," and to a simpler, more spiritual life that nonetheless honors social responsibilities.

62. Vitto, Cindy Lynn. "The Virtuous Pagan in Middle English Literature." DAI 46 (1986): 1937A-38A.

63. Weldon, James F. G. "The Structure of Dream Visions in Piers Plowman." MS 49 (1987): 254-81.

The dreams of the poem do not fall into a single framework; each, with its prologue and epilogue, constitutes a separate dream-vision poem combined in "a unified structure comprised of interrelated yet contrasting kinds of dream visions." The prologues and the dreams they introduce in the B text create three structural groups that delineate the Dreamer's spiritual state and the nature of his dreams. Dreams 1, 2, 3 (B. Prol., B. 1- 12) are "dreams of attachment", in which the worldliness of the Dreamer is defined through the secular motifs of motiveless wandering and the search for adventures, reminiscent of romances, travelbooks, and the literature of courtly love. Dream 2 with its prologue emphasizes his passivity as an observer. The prologue of the dream-within-a-dream in dream 3 moves the focus inward; after this dream experience he understands that spiritual progress involves spiritual activity. Group 2 (dreams 4, 5, 6; B.13-18) projects a more pensive Dreamer, wandering but detached in space and landscape; the prologues dissociate him from the world and his visions become more spiritual. Group 3 (dreams 7, 8; B. 19- 20) are 'dreams of spiritual advance." As a result of dream 7 he changes his appearance and moves toward the Church, whereas in dream 8 the contrite Dreamer, in entering Unity, moves from historical religion to a more ideal version.

64. Whitman, Jon. Allegory: The Dynamics of an Ancient and Medieval Technique. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987.

Incidental references: in its abrupt shifts of perspective, PPl self-consciously calls into question modes of language that distinguish the "literal" from the "allegorical." The poem illustrates the strategies developed earlier by allegorists such as Alan of Lille and Dante to give their poetry a scriptural dimension.

65. Wirtjes, Hanneke. "Piers Plowman B.xviii. 3 7 1: 'right ripe must.'" Stokes and Burton (no. 60 above) 133-43.

Must in B. 18.3 71 refers to "new wine," rather than "grape juice in the process of becoming wine." Christ will not be able to quench his thirst until the Last judgment, when he will drink the new wine at its earliest moment when the fermenting grape has become wine. Grapes and wine in such Old Testament passages as Num. 13:24, Cant. 1: 13, Isa. 5:1-7 were interpreted in the Middle Ages as types of Christ's Passion; Isa. 5:1-7 forms the basis of the second Tractus of Mass on Holy Saturday, and WL's mention of the Good Friday Mass and Adoration of the Cross (B. 18) shows he had the Holy Week liturgy in mind. The comment of the Glossa ordinaria on John 19:28, Luke 23:26 and Mark 15:36 associates the vinegar of the Passion with both the Jews and the apple eaten by Adam and Eve. Through his outwitting of the Devil, Christ turns the "bitternesse" prepared for him by the "doctor of death" into the sweet wine of the Resurrection.

66. Aers, David, ed. Medieval Literature: Criticism, Ideology, and History. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986. Rev. Pamela Gradon, RES 38 (1987): 535-37.

67. Alford, John A. and Dennis P. Seniff. Literature and Law in the Middle Ages: A Bibliography of Scholarship. New York and London: Garland, 1984. Rev. R. J. Schoeck, ELN 24 (1987): 68.

68. Bennett, J. A. W. Middle English Literature, ed. and completed by Douglas Gray. Oxford History of English Literature, vol. 1, pt. 2. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Rev. J. A. Burrow, N&Q ns 34 (1987): 520-21; Charles Blyth, EIC 37 (1987): 321-29; A. J. Minnis, TLS 6 Feb. 1987: 140.

69. Bowers, John M. The Crisis of Will in Piers Plowman. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1986. Rev. Robert Adams, YLS 1 (1987):135-40.

70. Brewer, Derek. English Gothic Literature. Macmillan History of Literature. London and New York: Macmillan, 1983. Rev. Claude Gauvin, EA 40 (1987): 197-98.

7 1. Burrow, J. A. The Ages of Man: A Study in Medieval Writing and Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Rev. Thomas D. Hill, SAC 9 (1987): 198-99; Alison Lee, English 36 (1987): 267-71; Christina von Nolcken, RES 38 (1987): 534-35.

72. DiMarco, Vincent. Piers Plowman: A Reference Guide. Boston: G. K. Hall, 1982. Rev. S. S. Hussey, YES 17 (1987): 246-47.

73. Dove, Mary. The Perfect Age of Man's Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Rev. Alison Lee, English 36 (1987): 267-71.

74. Goldsmith, Margaret E. The Figure of Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman Studies 2. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1981. Rev. Charlotte Brewer, N&Q ns 34 (1987): 252.

75. Griffiths, Lavinia. Personification in Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman Studies 3. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1985. Rev. Judith D. Anderson, Speculum 62 (1987): 419-21; Richard Kenneth Emmerson, YLS 1 (1987): 144-45; James Simpson, N&Q ns 34 (1987): 63-64.

76. Hartung, Albert E., gen. ed. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English 1050-1500, vol. 7. New Haven: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1986. Rev. Derek Pearsall, YLS 1 (1987): 148-50.

77. Heffernan, Thomas J., ed. The Popular Literature of the Middle Ages. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985. Rev. Heather O'Donoghue, TLS 14 Aug. 1987: 880.

78. Salter, Elizabeth. Fourteenth- Century English Poetry: Contexts and Readings. Oxford: Clarendon Press; London and New York: Oxford University Press, 1983. Rev. S. S. Hussey, MLR 82 (1987): 437-39.

79. Stokes, Myra. Justice and Mercy in Piers Plowman: A Reading of the B Text Visio. London and Canberra: Croorn Helm, 1984. Rev. S. S. Hussey, MLR 82 (1987): 437-39.

80. Szittya, Penn R. The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986. Rev. Robert E. Lerner, SAC 9 (1987): 263-66.