Piers Plowman: Getting from A to B

The main focus of the seminar will be the earlier A Version of the 14th century poem Piers Plowman, which we’ll be reading in the new, electronic classroom edition that I am developing. The relationships between the A Version and its continuation and revision in the B Version provide lively matters for literary dispute and critical reading, and some of our discussion will focus on the work of the B-Reviser of the text of A. (We’ll also look, more briefly, at the substantial Continuation that constitutes the major contribution of B.)
The seminar will examine a number of (related) issues: textual variants; authorship; whether the A Version is unfinished or incomplete; the status of the controversial ‘John But Passus’; and the relations of the poem(s) to the social and political turmoil of the latter fourteenth century.
The poem is in a ‘foreign’ language (Middle English), and my edition will be looking for ways to help beginning (and more advanced) readers to become comfortable with reading a text contemporary with Chaucer but in a rather different linguistic and literary style.
Students will make oral and written presentations to the seminar and will submit a term paper related to topics in the seminar.
For reading, I will provide a CD of the ‘beta’ version of my edition of A to the class, and ask the Bookstore to order a paperback edition of the B Version: A.V.C. Schmidt, ed The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text Based on Trinity College Cambridge MS B.15.17 (Everyman's Library) London: Dent, 1995. ISBN 0460875094.

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