ANNUAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

1998

Jump to Book Reviews

1. Alford, John. "Piers Plowman." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 598-601.

Concise survey of textual tradition, language, summary, versions, and critical history; on the last, the present assumption that the author was a careful and sophisticated thinker "has proved far more productive than the earlier assumption that he was not."

2. Alford, John. "Truth in Middle English Literature." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 744-45.

Brief survey of a crucial and polysemous ME word for faith, justice, integrity, and finally also factual accuracy, which "came to embody certain social values," especially chivalric virtue but also, in PPl especially, the broader social virtue of obeying "any rightful authority on earth."

3. Alford, John. "Law in Middle English Literature." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 414-15.

Brief survey of use in ME literature of trial scenes, legal terminology, and theories about justice; in usage of legal terminology PPl is especially "impressive," "almost certainly" bespeaking the author's legal education.

4. Alford, John. "Bible in Middle English Literature." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 126-28.

Brief survey of how the Bible and medieval techniques for interpreting it contributed to and shaped the products of ME "poetic imagination"; PPl is notable for heavy use of quotations from the Bible.

5. Baggott, David James. "The Authority of Will: Episcopal Reform, Piers Plowman, and the Genres of Religious Instruction in Late Medieval England." Diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1997. DAI 58 (1998): 2662.

6. Baker, Joan, and Susan Signe Morrison. "The Luxury of Gender: Piers Plowman and The Merchant's Tale." YLS 12 (1998): 31-63.

Chaucer composes the Merchant's Tale as a response to the themes of gender and appropriate marriage partners rehearsed by L in B.9. Both poets condemn excessive sexual appetite as transgressive, though L attempts to distinguish between covetousness (sexual or otherwise) and the need of deprivation. In the Castle Caro passage, women are subsumed into categories of the socially helpless along with dependent men and children, suggesting that gender designates a "luxury," a non-essential category of human being. In figuring Mede as female, the object and vehicle of both wealth and desire, L critiques the civil and ecclesiastical institutions where she circulates but where she lacks real power of her own. Similarly, as the object of January's luxuria, May is consistently objectified and treated with the same indifference as Mede, who is animated only by those who use her. Wit's critique of "unkynde" marriages is caricatured in the figure of January, who consistently misconceives and violates the ideal of "kyndely similitude" between men and women. The particular interest L shows in the A text for secular concerns such as marriage and family, as well as the use of more gender-inclusive terminology and exempla, suggests that women formed part of the intended audience for his earliest version of the poem.

7. Barney, Peter. "Line-Number Index to the Athlone Edition of Piers Plowman: The C Version." YLS 12 (1998): 159-73.

An index to lines referenced in the introduction to R-K, listed by passus and line number. Included is a list of places in the B version where R-K differ from Schmidt's B edition with regard to possible revisions in the last two passûs.

8. Barratt, Alexandra. "Moral and Religious Instruction." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 523-24.

Brief survey from origins of formal instruction in thirteenth-century church conciliar legislation, to fourteenth-century ME texts where the didactic tradition so instigated by the church is directly or indirectly presented. "Much of PPl is incomprehensible" without knowledge of this tradition.

9. Bartlett, Anne Clark. "Cracking the Penile Code: Reading Gender and Conquest in the Alliterative Morte Arthure." Arthuriana 8 (1998): 56-76.

The poem exhibits a pervasive "sexual logic" in which the character with the most masculine prowess prevails by means of verbal or physical domination of an enemy. Arthur's battle with the giant on St. Michael's Mount fuses conventions of erotic love and combat by appropriating the language of the romance tradition of secret meetings between lovers. The meeting with Lady Fortune parallels the fight with the giant, as she enacts a gendered conquest, or Baudrillardan seduction, of Arthur. In terms of the gender system constructed by the poem, Arthur is emasculated by Modred's impregnation of an apparently willing Guenevere.

10. Bishop, Louise. "Dame Study and Women's Literacy." YLS 12 (1998): 97-115.

L's choice of feminine gender for the figure of Study derives both from the Augustinian notion of the feminine text and the contemporary gendering of the vernacular reader as feminine in the Oxford translation debates. Study, an embodiment of the physical process of learning to read, represents a learning both literate and illiterate, vernacular and Latin. Her inability to understand Latinate theology (10.182-83) embeds her in the debates about Latin and the vernacular, favoring the vernacular in the same way PPl does. An emblem of affective reading, she emphasizes communal, lay perception. As the wife of Wit, she dramatizes the competition for a reader's conscience, emphasizing charity and social activism, providing the intermediary between Thought and Imaginatif.

11. Black, Merja. "A Scribal Translation of Piers Plowman." MÆ 67 (1998): 257-90.

The text of BL MS Harley 2376 (C-text siglum N) represents a scribal translation of the poem, in which the tendency to regularize word order and to avoid inflected and archaic forms converts the language of the poem into something more closely resembling a contemporary spoken idiom. While the resulting "easy-reading" form of the poem may have no literary or textual use, the patterns of scribal alteration can provide indications of its intended audience: a Herefordshire patron of some wealth, of limited book-learning, perhaps with some connections to Lollardy. The N translation highlights the importance of distinguising between regionally significant variation and variation that reflects sociolinguistic factors. Includes appendix citing replacement of lexical items by the scribal translator.

12. Blake, N. F. "Reflections on the Editing of Middle English Texts." McCarren and Moffat, A Guide to Editing Middle English (No. 45). 61-77.

The philologically oriented attitude toward editing evident in the EETS project has persisted in the editing of ME texts, isolating medievalists from much of the current debate regarding editorial technique. Given the modes of literary production during the ME period, the concept of a definitive version of a text based on the author's original or even final intentions may be an anachronism. The modern reader of an edited ME work will have many expectations of what an edition will be like, with as many difficulties as possible ironed out, whereas the medieval reader would have had to accept the text in the format employed by the available copy. The modern editorial impulse tends to operate bidirectionally, attempting to preserve minute details relevant to a philological investigation of the text at the same time as emending to make sense of the text as a piece of literary art, illustrative of the culture of the age.

In the case of PPl, the B text has always been considered best from a literary point of view, though this preference runs counter to the accepted wisdom of editing, which privileges either the author's original or the final version of the text. We ignore L's apparent desire to clarify the meaning of his poem in C when we prioritize B, assuming our own critical assumptions are more valid than the author's final intentions.

Choosing a base manuscript for editing each version of PPl has reflected different premises: Trinity was chosen for A (K) because of its completeness; Laud (Skeat, Bennett) or Trinity B.15.17 (K-D, Schmidt) because the former best represented the assumed archetype, the latter because is the earliest extant witness and contains a reasonably consistent orthography and grammar (though not necessarily L's); HM 143 for Pearsall's C because it is a good representation of the textual tradition to which it belongs. Difference in criteria demonstrates the lack of agreement on how to choose a base manuscript.

Only Kane's edition of A provides detailed discussion of his editorial procedure. Until editors consider more carefully what purpose is to be served and what audience reached by any one edition, we will continue to produce a variety of editions based on uncertain principles.

13. Bodleian Library. Three Manuscripts from the Bodleian Library. Oxford: Bodleian Library, 1998. Microfilm.

Microfilm record of MSS Digby 18 (Richard Rolle), Digby 171 (Piers Plowman C-text), Digby 181 (Hoccleve, Chaucer, et al.).

14. Braswell, Mary Flowers. "Virtues and Vices, Books of." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 762-63.

Brief survey of treatises of basic points of religious doctrine generated in Lateran IV and later councils, whose utility often makes them not "stimulating reading" (apart from Handlyng Synne) but whose mark on major ME literature is deep, as in the Confession of the Sins in PPl.

15. Brosamer, Matthew James. "Medieval Gluttony and Drunkenness: Consuming Sin in Chaucer and Langland." Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1998. DAI 58 (1998): 4643.

16. Chance, Jane. "Literary Influences: Medieval Latin." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 437-38.

Brief survey of how Macrobius, Boethius, Bernardus Silvestris, Alan of Lille and others were important constituents of the learned tradition that profoundly shaped ME literature's form and concerns, from the types of authorial personae to the allegorical entites engaging in debate, where the influence of this tradition on PPl is perceptible.

17. Conlee, John W. "Debate Poems." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 233-35.

Brief survey of ME debate poems, with discussion of WW and P3A.

18. Dauer, Susan Jaye. "Messianic Elements in Piers Plowman, B Text: Piers, Messiah." Diss., University of Texas, Austin, 1997. DAI 59 (1998): 496.

19. Davis, Bryan Patrick. "As the Boke Tellith: Reading and Writing Piers Plowman in the 15th Century." Diss., Ohio State University, 1997. DAI 58 (1998): 2666.

20. Dean, James. The World Grown Old in Later Medieval Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1997.

The idea of the world grown old, termed senectus mundi, persists throughout the Middle Ages, representing the sense of a continuing estrangement from divinity as the direct result of human sin. In the sixth age of human history, that following the incarnation, the world continues to decline physically and morally, since men and women, knowing of Christ, reject him by doing evil. At the same time, the world potentially becomes improved spiritually, when of their free choice humans elect to behave morally and decline to consent to sin. Augustine's treatment of the doctrine in The City of God is especially influencial, as human history is viewed from a perspective of physical decay and spiritual maturation: the earth declines through six ages while the humble and oppressed -- citizens of the city of God -- gain the possibility of salvation.

Commentary on the parable of the vineyard (Matt. 20.1-16) was of central importance to exegitical development of senectus mundi. as the hours of the parable are associated with the historical maturation process. In a famous sermon delivered at Paul's Cross in the late 1380's, Thomas Wimbledon combines both topics, linking his protheme of the world ages with his theme of "@elde reckynyng of thi baili:" at the end of the six ages, mortals of whatever estate must give account of their work in the "vineyard," the church. The three estates provide a natural division of the sermon's theme, and the subsequent three question for the estates -- "How hast thou entred?" "How hast thou reulid?" and "How hast thou lyuyd?" -- seem to anticipate the triad of Do's in PPl, as well as important aspects of CT.

In clerical satire, the motif of the world upside-down appears often in conjunction with that of the world grown old, as the world's decline is attributed to the overturning of old ethics and values. Anti-fraternal polemic also draws on the theme of senectus mundi, with the rise of mendicant orders, often perceived as contemporary equivalents of the Pharisees, identified as one of the "signs" of the last times.

In PPl, L depicts the movement from innocence to experience as a rejection of spiritual and agrarian values, embodied in Piers the Plowman. The world of the narrative has become labyrinthine through human fraud and corruption, especially in the church, which has become so morally compromised that reform may not be possible. The Dreamer makes an interior pilgrimage to discover the grounds of spiritual renewal, the garden within, which must be cultivated by conforming to Christ's model in order to transcend the ravages of time, both in the decay of the body and the world's degeneration. For the locus of this pilgrimage, L deploys the controlling image of the felde to represent the world, the saeculum, in which people work for, or prey upon, the common weal.

As an antitype of Piers stands the figure of Cain, emblematic of the Augustinian city of man and of the rejection of the agrarian ideal. L associates Cain with the "wastours" and hence with those who refuse to cultivate their gardens as they should. Wit, drawing on popular interpretation of Gen. 6.1-2, develops the idea of genetic wickedness into a typology of marriages based on primitive history and its consequences, with couplings motivated by lust and greed dominating the modern era. Cain's engendering "in vntyme" becomes emblematic of the persistent and willful falling into sin which will bring on a recrudescence of the evil temporarily arrested by the Flood.

In the plowing of the half-acre, another transformation of the felde and of the vineyard, Piers's communal ideal that all citizens should promote the common profit founders on the reality of the fallen nature of man, and Hunger must be invoked against the Cain-like "wastours." The felde undergoes a further transformation in B.16, into the garden of Charity. This is the archetypal felde, the interior locus of action where humankind lost the image of God through original sin, of which the other feldes within the narrative are exterior mirrors. In passus 19, Piers's harrowing of the felde offers the Dreamer a vision of the way by which mankind can recover the image of God and reverse the pernicious effects of the world grown old.

The call to dine at Conscience's feast represents the culmination of the laborers' work in the vinyard, as the eucharist, Piers's "breed yblessed," finds its way from Truth's felde into the barn of Unity, provided the community renders unto God according to the ethic of redde quod debes. One helps pay back this debt when one works, whether in manual labor or praying, the way of Martha and Mary (or Hawkyn and Patience) respectively. Yet passus 20 portrays a field of folk who reject the work of the felde, attack the barn of Unity, and help build Cain's city of man through marriages contracted and births conceived "in vntyme."

21. Edwards, A. S. G. "Editing and the Teaching of Alliterative Verse." McCarren and Moffat, A Guide to Editing Middle English (No. 45). 95-106.

The paucity of manuscript witnesses to works of alliterative poetry, combined with the possibility of multiple authorship in some cases, makes the establishing of a distinctive authorial usus scribendi -- and hence some form of direct editing -- open to question. Possible forms of composition of alliterative poetry, often tending toward stock collocations and formulas, lend little support to an interventionist approach to recover originality. The editor thus must confront the responsibility to make the audience aware not only of the indeterminacy of his or her text, but of the extent of that indeterminacy.

Donatelli's edition of Death and Liffe and Hanna's edition of the Awntyrs of Arthur demonstrate how different editorial methodologies imply very different audiences. Donatelli's decision to eschew radical emendation in the face of a highly problematic text presupposes an audience of fellow scholars who will add their own scholia of commentary and (perhaps) speculative emendation, providing a text of limited usefulness to undergraduate and possibly graduate students. Conversely, Hanna's energetic editorial intervention produces a text that does not address the needs of a student audience which may not grasp the extent to which the literary structure they seek to understand is shaped by modern editorial intervention. The search for a text appropriate for classroom use must involve the search for a via media, one that presents the text responsibly but without taking the implications of the textual evidence to a point where that evidence, rather than the study of the literary work, becomes the main focus. The teaching of Middle English literature requires some introduction to the textual problems of the materials involved, a recognition that "the text" is more appropriately seen as "a state of a text."

Additionally, the protocols of annotation and explication may vary for alliterative texts, with glossing not restricted to single words but to larger units. Commentary should not be limited to identifying collocations within texts, but should also seek to elucidate the dynamic nature of the language of the text as literary artifact, to relate lexis to poetic structure.

22. Everhart, Deborah. "Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 641-42.

Style, dating, implied political theory, use of PPl in.

23. Everhart, Deborah. "Siege of Jerusalem, The." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 699.

Form, sources, date.

24. Fein, Susanna. "Death and Life." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 233.

Form, dating question, comparison of treatment of harrowing of hell to PPl B.18 (Death and Life "does not suffer from the comparison").

25. Galloway, Andrew. "Intellectual Pregnancy, Metaphysical Femininity, and the Social Doctrine of the Trinity in Piers Plowman." YLS 12 (1998): 117-52.

PPl sponsors a Trinitarian model of spiritual generativity which rejects the patristic distrust of femininity at the same time that it privileges community over individuality. L's Trinitarianism is less interested in abstract psychology than in historically and socially attentive vision, an epistemology of direct, social experience as a reflection of divinity, and finds Trinitarian conception and generativity directly in immediate social experience.

L's treatment of human generativity is distinguished from Bonaventure and Mirk by his location of lay, physical procreativity prior to intellectual and clerical authority, or even social rank. Faith elaborates the image of the family as the image of the Trinity, with procreation becoming the great leveller in which all humans are linked as one entity, the community of Mother Church. By claiming the notion of "kyndenesse" as the direct instantiation of the Holy Spirit, the Samaritan maintains the centrality of procreative and familial relationships, which includes both the lay and clerical family. L's exemplum of nursing mothers as models of the active life (C.9.74-82) contrasts Bonaventure's alignment of active creativity with the Father, offering a feminized conception of generativity as love.

The correlative epistemological goal of the poem emerges in the image of God's historical, incarnate "suffraunce" -- an utter receptivity that balances an utter creativity. Faith's comparison between Christ and a "widewe" implies not only Jesus's deprivation of the father, but knowledge learned through experience. With the explicit feminizing of the Son's intellectual posture, suffering as a human being among humans becomes the primary means for intellectual and spiritual growth, even God's. The Father's pregnancy of all history is both self-sufficient and incomplete, both for his own knowledge and for the reflections of that process in his creatures.

This epistemology of passivity and locating a model of charity in patient social experience mirrors L's persona within the poem, as L portrays himself as a flawed poet-teacher of sacred experience in his own familially unified world.

26. Galloway, Andrew. "Introduction to Special Section: Gender and Piers Plowman." YLS 12 (1998): 1-4.

A brief review of previous work on PPl and gender, and introductory remarks on the essays addressing the topic in YLS 12.

27. Greetham, D. C. "Textual Criticism [ME]." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 730-31.

Brief survey of medieval evidence, from holographs to multiple copies dated post-mortem, and of editorial strategies, from facsimile to diplomatic to best-text to recension to "deep editing"of "the sort practiced by K-D," the opposite of the "documentary fidelity" associated with EETS editions.

28. Gruenler, Curtis Albert. "Piers Plowman and the Medieval Use of Enigma." Diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1998. DAI 58 (1998): 4643-44.

29. Hamel, Mary. "Morte Arthure, Alliterative." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 525-26.

Date, genre, meter, place among other alliterative poems in style.

30. Hanna, Ralph, III. "A New Edition of the C Version." YLS 12 (1998): 175-88.

While the new Athlone C text is a massive achievement, superseding the editions of Skeat, Pearsall and Schmidt, the editors neglect to address the historicity of the manuscript evidence. R-K consider manuscript books as inert physical bearers of the text, accidental forms not engaged to any social relationship, just as the discussion of the text's transmission is removed from any social setting. The editorial postulate of C representing an incomplete revision, based on metrical correctness, rests on a hermeneutic circle, allowing them to withdraw from editing with the same intensity as occurred in the Athlone A and B. While L's intent might be recoverable from the record, R-K determine that the incomplete revisions of L's literary executor should stand as the closest approximation of the poet we can achieve. Where the editors choose to intervene in substantial readings, they almost universally improve what they find. But the possibilities for historicization are truncated by a merely logical reading of the evidence.

31. Hanna, Ralph, III. "Reading Prophecy / Reading Piers." YLS 12 (1998): 153-57.

The prophecy uttered by Clergy in B.10.331-35, interpreted by L's sixteenth-century readers as a prediction of the dissolution of the abbeys, is an internal reference rather than a historical one. It forecasts the attack of Antichrist in passus 20, the reference to the coming of Caym in the prophecy fulfilled by the appearance of the four orders of friars: Carmelites, Augustinians, Iacobites (Dominicans), and Minorites (Franciscans). Modern criticism of PPl too often reflects Victorian modes of reading, seeking to recuperate the poem as referring to historical reality, without sufficient regard for the internal mapping the poem provides for itself. These directives must be taken into greater account in order to construct a reading practice for the poem.

32. Hardwick, Paul. "The Poet as Ploughman." ChaucR 33 (1998): 146-56.

The filial relationship between the Parson and the Ploughman in the General Prologue to the CT represents their bond as spiritual ideals of humble Christian good living. The Plowman may be viewed as a secular shadow of the Christian ideals propounded by the unblemished Parson, not a fully formed character in himself, but the spiritual element of a character which may be adopted by any individual. Chaucer adopts the figure of the Plowman as exemplary laborer from L, but frees the image from its specifically religious connotations and imbues it with the connotations of literary creation derived from European tradition. Like the Plowman, Chaucer perceives his own role as poet to be in brotherhood with the Church, whose representative concludes the CT by sowing the seeds of "moralitee and vertuous mateere."

33. Hatcher, John. "Labour, Leisure and Economic thought Before the Nineteenth Century." Past & Present 160 (August 1998): 64-115.

The significant changes in real wage levels and labor scarcity prior to the industrial revolution had little effect on societal issues and attitudes. Although these changes altered interrelationships between different classes, the priorities of those classes remained the same, along with cultural perceptions of market concepts such as leisure, consumption, and work. Joseph Townsend, writing in 1786 that "it is only hunger which can spur and goad [the poor] on to labour" replicates L's discourse on the unique ability of hunger to transform idlers and beggars into willing workmen.

34. Henry, Avril. "Religious Allegories." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 633-34.

Brief survey of ME religious allegory in fourteenth century, distinguished in terms of those using "static allegorical devices" (buildings, charters, clothing, etc.) and those "suggesting process and change," such as those drawing on Guillaume de Deguileville's works. Of all ME works, "the subtlest in ideas and most varied in allegorical modes is PPl, which, like Pearl, concerns spiritual transformation; both poems show how language itself . . . reveals to man his spiritual purpose."

35. Hewett-Smith, Kathleen M. "Pierce the Plowman's Creed." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 597-98.

Form, date, relations to PPl.

36. Hewett-Smith, Kathleen M. "Jack Upland, Friar Daw's Reply, and Upland's Rejoinder." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 379.

Date, locale, satiric forms.

37. Hill, Thomas D. "Wisdom (Sapiential) Literature." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 805-7.

Brief survey of how proverbs, maxims, "wise sayings"constitute an important element of poetry from OE to ME, in the latter of which other issues of similar doctrinal form emerge, e.g. of anticlericalism as in PPl.

38. Kane, George. "Langland: Labour and ‘Authorship.’" N&Q 45 (1998): 420-25.

A generally critical review of Written Work: Langland, Labor and Authorship, Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, eds. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). The authors adopt an a priori assumption that C.5.1-104 constitutes an "Apologia pro vita sua" on the part of L, an assumption which prejudges its function in the poem. Analysis of this particular passage in isolation from the rest of the poem and its other versions tends to provide generalizations and inferences which the larger textual record does not support.

Hanna's contention that L represents himself (through the figure of the Dreamer) as a hermit ignores the active seeking of the Dreamer, driven by a quest for an object progressively redefined. Will does not claim to be perfect, but simply expresses the truism that the prayers of a man in the state of grace are pleasing to God. Kerby-Fulton offers no compelling evidence for her arguments that the focal passage is written to regain control over the text, to solicit patronage, and to assuage an offended readership. Clopper's view of the figure of the Wanderer as a vehicle for L's sympathy with the mendicant orders and his concern for their reform is countered by extensive evidence in C.5 and 22 that L did not consider the orders reformable. He admires the religious ideals of Franciscanism in its former state, not in its contemporary degeneration. Pearsall's location of L as an unbeneficed cleric in London is helpful, but L sees the economic conflict of London's commercial life as part of a larger cosmic predicament rather than a personal spiritual crisis, as Pearsall suggests. Middleton is correct to note the resemblance between the shape of the passage and the provisions of the 1388 Statute of Laborers, but this may arise from the passage itself having influenced the detail of the Statute. L himself may have had a hand in its drafting. Conscience and Reason, by the time of the writing of the passage, have acquired distinct allegorical values which transcend their value as political and judicial forces. They do not offer a reprieve to the Dreamer, since the scene of the action is the Dreamer's mind, and the questions they posed are self-imposed, his objections formulated to be dismissed. The lines which follow the passage, withheld by the editors in the revised edition which opens the volume, describe the Dreamer's contrition, an adumbration of his implication in the Great Confession of passus 6.

39. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn, and Denise L. Despres. Iconography and the Professional Reader: the Politics of Book Production in the Douce Piers Plowman. Medieval Cultures 15. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998.

The illustrated Douce 104 provides an example of the process by which medieval professional readers -- scribes, illustrators, annotators -- editorialize and adapt poetic texts in order to render them intelligible to their immediate audience. The placement of the cycle of illustrations in Douce is designed to enhance the mnemonic and meditative potential of a visionary work. As a scribe-illustrated manuscript, the Douce illustrations and annotations reflect the ideological concerns and representational systems belonging to a contemporary Anglo-Irish community of "clericists," an audience of readers at the interface between lay and clerical cultures.

[Visual Politics: Kerby-Fulton] The Douce illustrator's choices of iconographic images are replicated in anthologies targeted for pastorally minded clergy and clerks in minor orders, such as Oculus sacerdotis and Omne bonum. At the same time, the illustrations suggest that the artist, probably a clerk of the Dublin Exchequer, held little allegiance to the religious clerical world, and disapproved of the images of standard iconography. Images of Christ, the Holy Family, the saints and the church fathers are wholly absent from Douce, and virtually no biblical figures are represented. Moral authority is most often represented by lay figures. These are by turns "voicing figures" or "silent witnesses," providing a strategy for "voicing the text": marking the text with identifiers or signals which narrate the text or serve as mnemonics for other remembered discourses. The Douce artist works within a reformist tradition heavily influenced both by FitzRalphian anti-mendicantism and Franciscan ideals on poverty and simplicity, and exhibits a typically Anglo-Irish distrust of authority as well as a preference for realistic representation. The production of a PPl C text in the Dublin-Pale area can be adduced to the traffic between Little Malvern Priory and its lands in this area.

The colophon of Douce demonstrates that the professional readers who produced it were carrying out a commission to translate PPl into Middle Hiberno-English, and to provide the appropriate utilitarian devices of annotation and illustrations as finding devices and cues for understanding the text. Similarities between the Douce illustrations and the autograph miniatures of Matthew Paris suggest a common debt owed to legal and civil service marginal illustration, and to the visual tradition of Giraldus Cambrensis, whose Topographia provides the Douce artist with a social-realist discourse for representing visionary experience. A comparison of the different choices made by the annotator of Douce, probably a secular clerk, and that of another C text, Huntington Library MS 143, a professional London scribe, suggests that different professional readers could provide divergent cues on how to read the text, based on their own sense of the implied (or known) reader's expectations.

[Visual Heuristics: Despres] More than simply serving as "visual glosses," the Douce illustrations contruct a visionary ordinatio, which underscores both personal reformation and social accountability, urging a retrospective, ethical response from the reader. As with most marginally illustrated works (usually devotional), the disendowed figures inhabiting the margin invite the dreamer, as well as the reader, to become Christlike by coming to share their misery and their consolation. The mode of reading encouraged by such marginal gloss is both nonlinear and contemplative. The figures become part of the reader's memory, enabling the reader to mesh his experience with the dreamer's, so that the reader is redirected to different sections of the text, resulting in a directed reading experience that approximates the dream vision itself.

L deflects attention from his own identity in order to generalize the highly personal nature of religious experience, and the Douce illustrator, recognizing this strategy, concentrates his energies on recreating the interior experience of spiritual illumination. As part of this design, he adapts and modifies the conventional iconography of the Seven Ages of Man to reflect the dreamer's introspective journey. The choice of the friar/physician as the final illustration, an image which conflates spiritual negligence with clerical exploitation, resists a neat closure to the narrative, offering instead another journey to seek grace.

40. Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn and Steven Justice. "Reformist Intellectual Culture in the English and Irish Civil Service: The Modus tenendi parliamentum and its Literary Relations." Traditio 53 (1998): 149-203.

The Modus, a text describing (and implicitly advocating) parliamentary structure based on "reformist" and "socially generous" principles dated variously across the fourteenth century, can best be seen to have originated in the circle of the royal bureaucrats in Westminster during Edward III's reign; it was later significant in the context of new kinds of parliamentary reportage and new emphases on "the Commons" and church reform, including disendowment, appearing from the Good Parliament on and including an important role in early fifteenth-century Anglo-Irish efforts at analogous reform. These milieux and ideological features parallel PPl and its early contexts, from the texts’ shared attention to the "commons," royal obligations, and disendowment, to evidence of government scribes in the iconic signs in the C manuscript of PPl, Huntington Library MS 143, to the similar appearance in Anglo-Irish contexts of both the Modus and the PPl manuscript, Bodleian Library MS Douce 104, to L's own possible evocation of those royal bureaucratic manuscript icons, e.g. a pictogram for "church reform" in Exchequer documents of a cleric being struck on the head with a sword may have inspired L to declare that abbots "Shal haue a knok vppon here crounes" (C.5.177).

41. Ladd, Andrew Patrick. "The Gothic Arthur: A Study of the Arthurian Transformations in Geoffrey's Historia, Layamon's Brut, and the Alliterative Morte Arthure." Diss., Emory University, 1998. DAI 59 (1998): 1156.

42. Lawton, David. "Dream Vision." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 250-51.

Briefly charts this "shifting complex of generic feaures and modes" from Bible to its gradual assemblage into a distinct literary genre in the later Middle Ages, concluding with Skelton. PPl is "the greatest of all English works seeking to come to terms with the implications of dream vision for political and social commentary, literary creation, and religious truth."

43. Marx, William. "Harrowing of Hell." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 341.

Brief survey from Gospel of Nicodemus to cycle drama, where the Harrowing is a "mirror of changing doctrine on the Redemption." Typically a vehicle for three themes -- of imprisonment and release of Joseph of Arimathea and Christ's lineage, of fulfillment of prophecies, and of the Redemption -- in PPl as in cycle drama it becomes a "forum for a debate between Christ and the devils on the justice of freeing the souls in hell."

44. Matsushita, Tomonori. A Glossarial Concordance to William Langland's The Vision of Piers Plowman: the B-text. Hildesheim; New York: Olms-Weidmann, 1998.

A concordance to the B text based on Schmidt 1995, with the revisions and corrections from the 1997 reprint. Contains glossary of all headwords of ME, Latin, and Old French, and cites all occurrences.

45. McCarren, Vincent P., and Douglas Moffat, eds. A Guide to Editing Middle English. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998.

See nos. 12, 21.

46. Morey, James H. "Plows, Laws, and Sanctuary in Medieval England and in the Wakefield Mactacio Abel." SP 95 (1998): 41-55.

The ancient association of the plow with fertility ritual and ceremony accords to the plow and to the man operating it an enhanced status under the law in the Middle Ages. The ritualistic function of the plow survives in the traditional customs represented in the English Plow Plays, and in the use of plowshares and coulters in trial by ordeal. The "king's peace" accorded to the sanctuary of the church and to travellers on the highway extends to the plowman as well. The sanctity of the plowman derives from his critical role in food production, and contributes to the popular conception of the plowman as a man in a state of grace. In the Mactatio Abel, the Wakefield Master draws upon contemporary ceremonial and legal associations with the plow to designate Cain as a type of the agricola inutilis.

47. Nissé, Ruth. "A Coround Ful Riche:" The Rule of History in St. Erkenwald." ELH 65 (1998): 277-95.

The poem focuses on the state of English politics 1380-90, alluding to the renaming of a number of temples by St. Augustine and the depiction of saints by pagan idolatry. It also provides an account on the association among language, history, religion and Richard II's absolutist policies in London, England, in the mid to late-1390s. Moreover, the poem presents concerns about secular values associated with social unity and Britain's history.

48. Paxson, James J. "Gender Personified, Personification Gendered, and the Body Figuralized in Piers Plowman." YLS 12 (1998): 65-96.

An application to PPl of principles developed in his article "Personification's Gender" (Rhetorica 16 [1998]: 149-79). Both Latin grammar and semiological deep structures associated with the Genesis myth produce female personified characters which advertise to readers the loquacious effects of characterization achieved through the trope of prosopopeia. The body of woman becomes a figure for figuration itself. L's experimental gender shifting among personified characters finds its ultimate expression in the figure of Anima, who appears first in B.9 as the romantic object of male desire, then reappears in passus 15 as a male entity, "oon wi#outen tonge and tee#." The description can be read as a catachresis for the human vagina, offering an ironic parallel between Anima as the Quickener of Bodies and the organ which gives life to nascent human bodies. Mede functions as the structural complement to Anima: lacking corporeal solidity or presence, she is emblematic of allegory's pure exterior.

49. Pigg, Daniel F. "Figuring Subjectivity in Piers Plowman C and ‘The Parson's Tale’ and ‘Retraction:’ Authorial Insertion and Identity Poetics." Style 31 (1997): 428-39.

In Chaucer's Parson's Tale, Retraction, and L's C.5, the authors engage in a homologue to confession by which they inscribe their identities in their texts and become themselves the subjects of poetic reflection. The "autobiographical" passage which opens passus 5 combines autobiographical and confessional modes to reintegrate the penitent subject -- both "Will" and WL -- into the body of the Church. The Retraction is similarly to be understood as Chaucer's sincere questioning of his own "entente," the key action required of the penitent in the confessional. His deployment of both clerical and literary discourses in the Retraction demonstrates that the subject cannot be separated from institutions.

50. Scase, Wendy. "Satire." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 665-67.

Brief survey from twelfth-century Latin satire to Chaucer and L and L's polemical followers. PPl is a satire of estates and social classes, and especially as anticlerical satire, in forms traditionally seen as "conventional and derivative" but more recently as "given new meanings in new circumstances."

51. Sheneman, Paul. "Grace Abounding: Justification in Passus 16 of Piers Plowman." PLL 34 (1998): 162-78.

Those who view L's theology concerning justification as a form of semi-Pelagianism, Robert Adams among them, argue that the poet presents acceptance by God being guaranteed by one's best efforts. A neo-Augustinian view, on the other hand, stresses L's stance on sola fideism, faith in Christ's atonement being sufficient for acceptance. In this view, good works follow conversion rather than preceding it. The Tree of Charity scene actually reinforces the Augustinian view: Piers represents fallen humanity, helpless to save himself. It is not his righteous anger that causes the Incarnation, as Adams claims, but the mercy of God. Satan possesses the fallen fruit because sin and death have not been defeated yet, a predicament God will mercifully overcome through the Incarnation. Passus 16 affirms the necessity of faith alone. Liberum Arbitrium's attempt to protect the fruit fails at times because, according to Bernard and Augustine, the unaided will cannot make right choices. Overcoming the assaults of sin is the work of the Trinity. This point is reinforced in the figure of Abraham, who is justified before God wholly by faith. His quest for Christ is analogous to Will's quest for salvation, though Will's conversion is deferred.

52. Shoaf, R. A. "Criticism, Modern, of Medieval Literature [ME]." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 221-23.

Brief survey of nineteenth- and twentieth-century critical methods and assumptions (with relevance to past and present approaches to PPl and brief suggestion of potential use of psychoanalytic theory for sexual or sexualized body parts mentioned in the poem, e.g. "lyme").

53. Silar, Theodore I. "An Analysis of the Legal Sense of the Word Fin (Finalis Concordia) in Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain, Pearl, Chaucer's Works, and Especially the Ending of Troilus and Criseyde." ChauR 32 (1998): 282-309.

In the "Swich fyn" passage of Troilus, Chaucer exploits the double meanings of fyn as "ending" and as the legal instrument known as the fyn, in full finalis concordia. The latter term describes a compromise settlement of a fictitious suit resulting in a secure conveyance of land between two consenting parties. The term appears in PPl in the passage describing the marriage of Mede, where the fictive element of the legal instrument, in which lies are sworn in order to transfer wealth, reinforces the allegorical union between Fals and Mede. The Gawain poet also deploys the term in its legal sense in both Pearl and SGGK, in passages heavily laden with legal terminology, in order to emphasize the quid pro quo arrangements upon which both feudal relationships and personal salvation depend. Chaucer makes extended use of the term in the problematic ending of Troilus in a self-conscious effort to acknowledge his awareness of the ending's conventionality. By signalling his audience with the word fyn that his ending has as much of the necessary convention as does the finalis concordia, he effects a reconciliation of the apparent conflict between the professed sentiments of the ending and the implied sentiments of the rest of the poem.

54. Szarmach, Paul E., M. Teresa Tavormina, and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Medieval England: An Encyclopedia. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1998. See nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 14, 16, 17, 22, 23, 24, 27, 29, 34, 35, 36, 37, 42, 43, 50, 52, 55, 58, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67.

55. Tavormina, M. Teresa. "Prophecy Literature." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 616-17.

Notices of Latin, French, Welsh, and English traditions in Britain; survey of typical contents of political and religious prophetic literature and the reflection of these in ME literature. PPl's predictions about Antichrist and the end of the world are among a host of other ME works dealing with this issue.

56. Taylor, Sean. "Annual Bibliography." YLS 12 (1998): 225-47.

Forty-seven annotated items and a list of book reviews.

57. Trigg, Stephanie. "The Traffic in Medieval Women: Alice Perrers, Feminist Criticism, and Piers Plowman." YLS 12 (1998): 5-29.

A comparison of the figure of Mede with the documented life of Alice Perrers demonstrates against the tendency to interpret either the allegorical female figure or a generalized idea of medieval woman as a determinate category. The ambiguity of Perrers's marital status in her defense against parliament suggests that the distinction between a femme sole and a femme couvert, the latter constituting a form of "civil death," was not always contingent on her relationship to particular men. Though Perrers may have attained her position of influence at court by becoming a sexual commodity, she was able to transform this symbolic capital into real political power. In the same way, Mede is abstracted in PPl as an object of exchange, though not completely, since she is not merely the gift, the woman whose marriage is at the king's disposal, but a giver of gifts herself, and the king's counsellor. Mede's willingness to imagine herself in the masculine role of the King's marshall (B.3.197-204) nearly succeeds, until Conscience is able to fragment her personification into the two kinds of Mede, once again reducing her to the object of disputation.

58. Trigg, Stephanie. "Winner and Waster." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 805.

Brief survey of form; dating range (questioning the traditional date of 1352-53 based on internal markers); dependence of substance on the Aristotelian conceptual model of economic modalities; and affinities to PPl, including "the poet's willingness to use a variety of traditional voices and his mastery of rhetorical dispute [which] leave the reader with a vivid sense of problems raised, rather than an authoritative solution."

59. Tripp, Raymond P., Jr. "The Evolving Epistemology of Piers Plowman." Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 19 (1998): 70-78.

Though L's vocabulary for faculties of mind ("kynde wit," "kynde-knowing," "inwit") is inherited from scholastic discourse, he writes at a time when the older disctinctions between good and bad, right and wrong, are in the process of merging into a symbolic interface between the self and its experience of the world. Accordingly, these faculties are better understood as motions of internal self-consciousness than as discrete structures. The figure of Meed in particular resists definition in standard scholastic terms, as L cannot reconcile the paradox between the Meed "God of his grace gives" -- measureless Meed -- and "measurable hire." Meed ultimately represents the very force of waking consiousness, integrating both the morality of grace and the amorality of survival.

60. Turville-Petre, Thorlac. "Alliterative Revival." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 26-28.

Brief survey of metrical types, genres, presumed provincial audiences, scholarly views of origins; PPl is "uncharacteristic"among this group in several ways, especially evasion of typical alliterative diction and non-regional audience.

61. Turville-Petre, Thorlac. "P3A." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 584.

Form, source, lexical relations to other alliterative poems.

62. Twomey, Michael. "Allegory and Related Symbolism." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 22-26.

Concise history of allegorical interpretation and of allegorical literature, the latter defined as "a narrative whose entire reference is to something outside of itself and that contains various allegorical images, often arranged into episodic scenes serving as cues for interpretation," a definition that PPl easily fits although within that general category PPl is also "not easily classified because of its protean shape and encyclopedic range." Includes religious, political, and psychological allegory.

63. Twomey, Michael. "Pearl-poet." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 587-90.

Brief survey of poetic forms, dating, codicological evidence, use of souces, and critical history of the four poems in BL Cotton Nero A.x (St. Erkenwald rejected as not by the same poet).

64. Westover, Jeff. "Arthur's End: The King's Emasculation in the Alliterative Morte Arthure." ChauR 32 (1998): 310-24.

Mordred's deadly wounding of Arthur in his felettes, or loins, functions as a symbolic emasculation, which marks the end of both the king's heroic enterprise and his royal lineage. The metaphor of the Round Table as a family of knights with Arthur as its parental head is integral to the tragedy because Arthur's failure to produce an heir to his throne symbolizes the destruction of his accomplishments and the end of his legacy. Arthur's lament over the corpse of Gawain identifies him as a kind of mater dolorosa, a feminization which presages his final destruction as an unmanned man who is cuckolded by Mordred, having produced no royal issue. The king's dying order to slay Mordred's children corresponds to the political and military castrations wrought by Mordred against him.

65. Wetherbee, Winthrop. "Literary Influences: Classical [ME]." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 431-32.

Brief survey showing Chaucer's and Gower's almost total innovation in heavy use of classical literature, as compared to the dearth in prior ME. To PPl "ancient culture contributes only scraps from the Distichs of Cato . . . and a single echo of Juvenal (B.14.304; cf. Juvenal, Satire 10.22)."

66. White, Hugh. "Nature (Kynde) in Middle English Literature." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 542-43.

Brief survey of views of nature in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century ME literature. Drawing on a lexical range of kynde encompassing "natural and Christian love," PPl presents "naturalness" as "a prime moral desideratum"; L less emphatically than other ME writers declares nature's subordination to God or Reason, even though he shows that the natural in a sexual context can urge toward sin.

67. White, Hugh. "Psychology, Medieval, in Middle English Literature." Szarmach, et al., Medieval England (No. 54). 624-25.

Brief notice of Aristotelian traditions (especially De anima) registered in various ME literature; in PPl B.11-12 "the imaginative power reviews the earthly creation, finds there pointers to God's love, and stimulates the narrator to contemplate his approaching end."

68. Wilcockson, Colin. "Glutton's Black Mass: Piers Plowman B-text, Passus V 297-385." N&Q 45 (1998): 173-76.

Glutton's confession (B.5) offers an impious parallel to the events of holy week, playing on a system of contrasting associations. The game of "newe faire" held over the clothes of Hick the Hackneyman and Clement the Cobbler parodies the casting of lots over Christ's garments from John 18-19, the third and final lesson in the Good Friday liturgy. The sharing of a communal cup by the rioters opposes itself to the feast of the Mass, which commemorates self-sacrifice, in the same way that Glutton's sleeping from Friday evening to sunset on Sunday enacts a bathic parallel to the resurrection.

69. Wittig, Joseph S. William Langland Revisited. Twayne's English Authors Series No. 537. New York: Twayne, 1997.

A student's introduction to PPl. Conceived as a single poem, the poet named L wrote for a lay and clerical middle class audience. The generic similarity between PPl and the chanson d’aventure suggests L and his readers would consider the poem a literary work rather than one merely pious or didactic. Over the course of the three versions, L perfects the technique of using the persona of Will as a distinctive though not simply individual satiric voice.

L portrays his society in terms of dysfunctional, individual sin, the result of disordered choice, being seen as an offense against society as well as against God. The only pardon a poena et a culpa is through individual cooperation with the Redemption, not only through baptism but confession and penance as well. The dominant problems confronted in PPl are not problems of knowing, but of willing and doing. L addresses the total behavior of individuals who, acting in love of neighbor and of God, might form a just community: for L, the practice of charity requires a sense of community.

The poem is organized according to a strategy of contrasting different forms of goods, juxtaposed as good and bad, secular and religious. The discourse of Holy Church in passus 1 provides the pattern for the entire poem, as Kaske has pointed out. Passûs 2-4 consider the use and abuse of artificial goods, and the corruption of secular society by money and greed. Passus 6 considers the agrarian community's struggle to provide the natural goods which sustain life. Passûs 8-20 concern the goods of the spirit, 8-13 truth, 13-20 love.

In the economy of PPl, "truth" means being willingly responsive to the facts of one's nature, the model for which is God. "Kynde knowyng" implies reacting naturally to what is known, and to manifest love. Knowledge surpasses mere conceptualization, passing from apprehension to response, i.e., to feeling, desire, and love.

The allegorical strategy incorporates two different modes, the picture model and the disclosure model. With the former, a static image provides abstract meanings which are "read out" as exegesis decodes an encoded truth. The latter begins with a discursive poposition, using figurative language as part of the process of discovering truth, and is more commonly used by L in the climactic passûs 16-20. In the personifications, L employs a bidirectional dynamic: he makes the general vividly comprehensible while identifying the particular as belonging to the general category.

Piers's tearing of the pardon does not reject the Redemption, but is directed toward the Priest's expectation of a blanket dismissal to sin. Piers recognizes that God has presented a path to forgiveness, but that he must respond to the offer effortfully. At this point the poem shifts in perspective from natural to spriritual goods, toward the quest for Dowel. The poem urges that although the truth about Dowel can be clearly stated, in order to know it kyndeliche, people need to be taught by example.

Piers himself represents the best in human nature. After Clergy's definition of Dowel in passus 13, Piers is increasingly associated with an expression of truth which emphasizes the love adumbrated by Clergy and described by Anima. The realization of Piers ultimately points to Christ, the only total manifestation of selfless love in human form. But he remains the best of human nature, so that after the Ascension, when the new church is being "sown" and "tilled," Piers is associated with Peter, the apostles, and their successors.

In the siege of Unity, L portrays the Christian community as so morally devastated that no unity remains, no hope of easily finding Piers, its moral leader. Conscience, having no nurturing community, needs to call to God for luck and grace in order to find a new Piers Plowman.

70. Aers, David, and Lynn Staley. The Powers of the Holy: Religion, Politics and Gender in Late Medieval English Culture. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996. Rev. T. L. Burton, ES 79 (1998): 565-66; R. Krug, Speculum 73 (1998): 142-43; Nicholas Watson, SAC 20 (1998): 219-26.

71. Brewer, Charlotte. Editing Piers Plowman: The Evolution of the Text. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rev. C. David Benson, Archiv für das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen 235 (1998): 422-26; Ralph Hanna, Speculum 73 (1998): 477-80; C. von Nolcken, N&Q 45 (1998): 245-46.

72. Clopper, Lawrence M. "Songes of Rechelesnesse." Langland and the Franciscans. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997. Rev. D. N. Baker, Choice 35 (1998): 1705-06.

73. Copeland, Rita, ed. Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Rev. David Lawton, SAC 20 (1998): 240-43.

74. Craun, Edwin D. Lies, Slander, and Obscenity in Medieval English Literature. Pastoral Rhetoric and the Deviant Speaker. Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 31. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Rev. Siegfried Wenzel, N&Q 45 (1998): 106-07.

75. Dean, James. The World Grown Old in Later Medieval Literature. Cambridge, Mass.: The Medieval Academy of America, 1997. Rev. Míceál F. Vaughan, YLS 12 (1998): 189-94.

76. Dyas, Dee. Images of Faith in English Literature 700-1500: An Introduction. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library. London and New York: Longman, 1997. Rev. Daniel Donoghue, N&Q 45 (1998): 481-82.

77. Economou, George, trans. William Langland's Piers Plowman: The C Version: A Verse Translation. Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996. Rev. Dick Barnes, YLS 12 (1998): 194-99; Micéal F. Vaughan, SAC 20 (1998): 243-46.

78. Fisher, John H. The Emergence of Standard English. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996. Rev. Mary Blockley, MP 96 (1998): 217.

79. Gradon, Pamela, and Anne Hudson, eds. English Wycliffite Sermons. Volumes 4 and 5. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996. Rev. Siegfried Wenzel, YLS 12 (1998): 199-204.

80. Hanna, Ralph, III. Pursuing History: Middle English Manuscripts and Their Texts. Figurae: Reading Medieval Culture. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996. Rev. Malcolm Andrew, RES 49 (1998): 204-05; Charlotte Brewer, YLS 12 (1998): 204-06; David Greetham, SAC 20 (1998): 269-77.

81. Houwen, L. A. J. R., and A. A. MacDonald, eds. Loyal Letters: Studies on Mediaeval Alliterative Poetry and Prose. Mediaevalia Groningana 15. Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1994. Rev. H. L. Spencer, RES 48 (1997): 77-78; E. G. Stanley, N&Q 44 (1997): 377-78.

82. Justice, Steven, and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, eds. Written Work: Langland, Labor and Authorship. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Rev. David Aers, YLS 12 (1998): 207-17; Rosamond Faith, English Historical Review 113 (1998): 426-27; Anne Hudson, MÆ 67 (1998): 328-29; George Kane N&Q 45 (1998): 420-25.

83. Kimmelman, Burt. The Poetics of Authorship in the Later Middle Ages: the Emergence of the Modern Literary Persona. Studies in the Humanities 21. New York: Peter Lang, 1996. Rev. Amy W. Goodwin, SAC 20 (1998): 283-88.

84. Pickering, O. S. Individuality and Achievement in Middle English Poetry. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Rev. John W. Conlee, SAC 20 (1998): 308-11.

85. Russell, George, and George Kane, eds. Piers Plowman: The C Version; Will's Vision of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best. London and Berkeley: Athlone Press, 1997. Rev. Donald Baker, ELN 36 (1998): 59-60; Anne Hudson, RES 49 (1998): 341-44; R. W. McConchie, NM 99 (1998): 343-44; Ian Robinson, Cambridge Quarterly 22 1998): 235-49; A. V. C. Schmidt, MÆ 67 (1998): 135-37.

86. Schmidt, A. V. C., ed. William Langland: Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text based on Trinity College Cambridge MS B.15.17. 2nd Edition. London and Melbourne: Dent, 1995. Rev. C. David Benson, Archiv für das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen 235 (1998): 422-26; Eli Lehrer, American Enterprise 9 (July/August 1998): 84.

87. Schmidt, A. V. C., ed. William Langland: Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions. London and New York: Longman, 1995. Rev. C. David Benson, Archiv für das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen 235 (1998): 422-26; Ian Robinson, Cambridge Quarterly 22 (1998): 235-49.

88. Tavormina, M. Teresa. Kindly Similitude: Marriage and Family in Piers Plowman. Piers Plowman Studies 11. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995. Rev. C. David Benson, Archiv für das Studium der neuren Sprachen und Literaturen 235 (1998): 427-29; John Bugge, Speculum 73 (1998): 272-75.

89. Teskey, Gordon. Allegory and Violence. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996. Rev. Seth Lerer, YLS 12 (1998): 217-21.

90. Wittig, Joseph S. William Langland Revisited. Twayne's English Authors Series No. 537. New York: Twayne, 1997. Rev. Anna P. Baldwin, YLS 12 (1998): 222-23.