Traugott Lawler

The detailed and wide-ranging Penn Commentary places the allegorical dream-vision of Piers Plowman within the literary, historical, social, and intellectual contexts of late medieval England, and within the long history of critical interpretation of the poem, assessing past scholarship while offering original materials and insights throughout. The authors' line-by-line, section by section, and passus by passus commentary on all three versions of the poem and on the stages of its multiple revisions reveals new aspects of the poem's meaning while assessing and summarizing a complex and often divisive scholarly tradition. The volumes offer an up-to-date, original, and open-ended guide to a poem whose engagement in its social world is unrivaled in English literature, and whose literary, religious, and intellectual accomplishments are uniquely powerful. The Penn Commentary is designed to be equally useful to readers of the A, B, or C texts of the poem. It is geared to readers eager to have detailed experience of Piers Plowman and other medieval literature, possessing some basic knowledge of Middle English language and literature, and interested in pondering further the particularly difficult relationships to both that this poem possesses. Others, with interest in poetry of all periods, will find the extended and detailed commentary useful precisely because it does not seek to avoid the poem's challenges but seeks instead to provoke thought about its intricacy and poetic achievements. Volume 4, by Traugott Lawler—covering passūs C.15-19 and B.13-17, the A version having ended earlier—creates a complete vade mecum for readers, identifying and translating all Latin quotations, uncovering allusions, providing full cross-reference to other parts of the poem, drawing in relevant scholarship, and unraveling difficult passages. Like the other commentaries, this volume contains an extensive overview and analysis of each passus, and the subdivisions within, large and small, and discusses all differences between the two versions. It pays careful attention to the poem at the literal level as well as to Latin texts that are analogues or even possible sources of Langland's thought and it emphasizes the comedy of the poem, of which these passūs offer a number of examples.

C Passus 15-19; B Passus 13-17

The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 4

The detailed and wide-ranging Penn Commentary on "Piers Plowman" places the allegorical dream-vision of the poem within the literary, historical, social, and intellectual contexts of late medieval England, and within the long history of critical interpretation of the work, assessing past scholarship while offering original materials and insights throughout. The authors' line-by-line, section by section, and passus by passus commentary on all three versions of the poem and on the stages of its multiple revisions reveals new aspects of the poem's meaning while assessing and summarizing a complex and often divisive scholarly tradition. The volumes offer an up-to-date, original, and open-ended guide to a poem whose engagement with its social world is unrivaled in English literature, and whose literary, religious, and intellectual accomplishments are uniquely powerful. The Penn Commentary is designed to be equally useful to readers of the A, B, or C texts of the poem. It is geared to readers eager to have detailed experience of Piers Plowman and other medieval literature, possessing some basic knowledge of Middle English language and literature, and interested in pondering further the particularly difficult relationships to both that this poem possesses. Others, with interest in poetry of all periods, will find the extended and detailed commentary useful precisely because it does not seek to avoid the poem's challenges but seeks instead to provoke thought about its intricacy and poetic achievements. Covering passūs C.15-19 and B.13-17, Volume 4 of the Penn Commentary on "Piers Plowman" creates a complete vade mecum for readers, identifying and translating all Latin quotations, uncovering allusions, providing full cross-reference to other parts of the poem, drawing in relevant scholarship, and unraveling difficult passages. Like the other commentaries in the series, this volume contains an extensive overview and analysis of each passus, and the subdivisions within, large and small, and discusses all differences between the two versions. It pays careful attention to the poem at the literal level as well as to Latin texts that are analogues or even possible sources of Langland's thought and it emphasizes the comedy of the poem, of which these passūs offer a number of examples.

Ralph Hanna

In volume 1 of Jankyn's Book of Wikked Wyves (Georgia, 1997), Ralph Hanna and Traugott Lawler presented authoritative versions of three medieval texts invoked by Jankyn (fifth husband of the Wife of Bath) in The Canterbury Tales. In Jankyn's Book, volume 2, Lawler and Hanna revisit one of those texts by way of presenting all the known contemporary commentaries on it. The text is Walter Map's “Dissuasio Valerii,” that is, “The Letter of Valerius to His Friend Ruffinus, Dissuading Him from Marrying.” Included in Jankyn's Book, volume 2, are seven commentaries on “Dissuasio Valerii,” edited from all known manuscripts and presented in their Latin text with English translation on the facing page. Each commentary opens with a headnote. Variants are reported at the bottom of the translation pages, and full explanatory notes appear after the texts, along with a bibliography and index of sources. In their introduction, Lawler and Hanna discuss what is known about the authors of the commentaries. Four are unknown, although one of these is almost certainly a Dominican. Of the three known authors, two are Dominicans (Eneas of Siena and the brilliant Englishman Nicholas Trivet), and one is Franciscan (John Ridewall). In addition, the editors discuss the likely readerships of the commentaries—the four humanist texts, which explicate Map's witty and allusive Latin and which were for use in school, and the three moralizing texts, which mount eloquent defenses of women and which were for use mainly by the clergy. While Lawler and Hanna's immediate aim is to give readers of Chaucer the fullest possible background for understanding his satire on antifeminism in “The Wife of Bath's Prologue,” the “Dissuasio Valerii” commentaries extend significantly our understanding of medieval attitudes, in general, toward women and marriage.

Traugott Lawler

About

Books

Join the club