aware of a narrowing of focus in Piers Plowman studies, in which what were the basic interpretative commonplaces guiding readers as recently as the 1980s might require some form of reassertion.
However, the broader issue—what a commentary was and what ends it sought—remained unresolved, and often a contentious issue among us. At the same time, we felt there was an ample arena in which work could proceed. We remained conscious of the fact that Skeat’s labors were more than a century old. Many more texts, particularly examples of devotional prose, had appeared since his time. Moreover, particularly in the years since 1949, when Donaldson had laid the vitiating “authorship controversy” to bed, the poem had appeared as an object of criticism, analyzed within any variety of provocative contexts. These had, of course, suggested new ways of explaining its contours and implicitly identified a rich surround of discussions available to Langland across a range of languages and discursive sites. And when we began, in the absence of Schmidt, no one since Skeat had attempted annotation of “the poem Piers Plowman’ ” in all its versions. The variations in explanatory technique that mark the various volumes of The Penn Commentary largely are predicated upon our laissez-faire decision made at this point—and the specific difficulties each of us found in his or her portion of the text. The explanation of procedures I have offered above seeks to explicate the form of this volume alone.
As I have indicated, the commentary team agreed on these guiding procedures by sometime in spring 1990. However, because coming to completion has proved such a protracted process, our work now emerges, a prospect we could not have envisioned when we began, in a context in which Carl Schmidt’s full parallel text and apparatus are readily available. It is thus appropriate to offer some account of how our efforts interface with his.
Certainly, Schmidt’s parallel texts offer a useful scholarly service. They helpfully expand upon the evidentiary basis on which Skeat relied and provide a considerably more satisfactory account of the poem (but for their inclusion of Z) than Skeat was able to give. However, Schmidt’s textual decisions rely too heavily upon attestation/stemmatic reasoning, and his product, as a result, is considerably less cogent than that, thought through on a variant-by-variant basis, of the Athlone editors (cf. Hanna 1997a, and for an assessment of Schmidt’s skills as grammarian and lexicographer of ME, Kane 1993). We see no reason, particularly given our decision to address a sophisticated audience, to abandon our previous decision to key our text to the Athlone edition. (Our decision to provide lemmata, as well as line references to all three versions, will facilitate the use of Schmidt’s notes, as well as those of other editions.)
Schmidt’s annotation is extensive and often very helpful. But he conceives his annotational role, as in his criticism (e.g., Schmidt 1987): as someone displaying Langland as poetic craftsman, a careful shaper of often moving verse. As a result, Schmidt’s textual notes, although filled with brilliancies concerning grammatical relations and local poetic detail (a number of which I include or allude to), fall largely within what we call “grammatical annotation.” One gains very little sense from Schmidt of poetic argument (as opposed to local poetic craft), or of the poem entering a world in which many of its topics would encounter and jostle with widely dispersed discursive concerns. Our approaches should best be viewed as complementing one another.
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Using the traditional commentaries on Piers Plowman is relatively easy. Their authors proceed, as grammarians always have, by the line. A reader finding something puzzling in the text and seeking guidance can turn immediately to that line number in the consecutively arranged “notes” and find whatever information the commentator has provided to help resolve the dilemma.
Our commentaries include a large number of the local assays familiar from these past models. But simultaneously, they are considerably more capacious. This follows from the arguments above that unraveling local enigma requires a general contextual decision that is larger than the simple line number that identifies past “grammatical annotation” of the poem. As noted above, we agreed rather early in this procedure to a commentary predicated on the medieval technique of divisio textus. We sought to identify substantial blocks of text, many longer than even the “verse paragraphs” demarcated by some of the poem’s most careful scribes (e.g., the copyists of LMRW of the B version). These offer a surer contextual grasp on poetic argument and its direction than merely considering lines in isolation, or within a five- to ten-line surround.
However, this decision does place on our readers unaccustomed burdens. In general, our “division notes,” the headnotes that preface the varying stretches into which we have divided the text, are elaborate and detailed. They are much more so than what succeeds them, the more traditional notes addressing “grammatical” matters. These longer headnotes, as I have indicated above, present a paradox; while we segment the poem, these notes most forcefully attempt to present its continuities. Hence, the most attentive user of our volumes will need to consider both sets. (In both sets, references have been keyed to the lineation of Russell and Kane’s C version [with “L” indicating one of Langland’s Latin lines]; cross-references to corresponding passages in A and B follow in parentheses.)1
Although all of us have collected long lists of readings from all three volumes we should have preferred not to see in a printed text of the poem, we agreed, as a general rule, to accept the Athlone text of the poem’s three versions without comment. Quite infrequently we point toward printed readings that have suppressed ones we find instrumental in pursuing the poem’s argument; see, for example, 5.10n or my one protracted assay, five possible corrections included in the notes to 8.206–88 passim. All Latin, both Langland’s citations and my illustrative materials, has been translated; as a general rule, translations are my own. However, all renditions of biblical materials have been taken from the Douay-Rheims version, and I have provided Siegfried Wenzel’s elegant facing-page translation, occasionally corrected, of the many citations I have drawn from Fasciculus Morum.
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I am personally indebted to a large number of people. First of all, to the other five members (including our retired colleague John Alford) of our group for a generation’s worth of readings, commentary on drafts, general amiable conversations, and suggestions. Most particularly, Steve Barney and Anne Middleton were assiduous in going over every word—and more than once—and in offering comfort and suggestions. This intense level of interchange means that the text below can scarcely be presented as single-authored, since I have absorbed more material and suggestions from the remainder of the team than I can acknowledge. I am particularly sad that Anne won’t see her many contributions and inspirations in print. Our common academic patrons, UCHRI and the National Endowment for the Humanities, also deserve thanks for their generous support of the project, particularly in its earliest stages. I have also benefited from the largesse of Keble College and of the Faculty of English Language and Literature, Oxford University.
A number of my colleagues have, often inadvertently and without meaning to feed my various manias, made significant contributions to this volume. I deeply regret that one, a friend and support for half a century since we were graduate students together, will not see these pages. I miss Lee Patterson’s growl (he’s the only person who has ever thought I wasn’t cynical enough) and his tenacious probity, the model lucid historical investigator and a coparticipant in the UCHRI “Annotation” project with which this volume began. My persistent interlocutors, Vincent Gillespie, Anne Hudson, Lynn Staley, Thorlac Turville-Petre, and Sarah Wood, have given me far more than they knew. Both Derek Pearsall and Robert Swanson, as they have for other volumes in this series, offered meticulous and fully detailed readings of the script, from which I profited immensely. Jerry Singerman and the University of Pennsylvania Press have performed admirably to bring some now aged computer files into an elegant published form. In spite of all these efforts at making this script into something of authority, I acknowledge my responsibility for all its shortcomings.
1. The presentation of Piers in this volume differs slightly from that outlined by my predecessors in their “Notes to the
