style="font-size:15px;"> Lewis & Short: Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short. A Latin Dictionary. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879.
MED: The Middle English Dictionary. Ed. Hans Kurath et al. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956–2001. Online at quod.lib.umich.edu.
OED: The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed., prepared by J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner. Oxford: Clarendon and New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Online at oed.com.
PL: Patrologiae cursus completus … series latina. Ed. J.-P. Migne et al. 221 vols. Paris, 1844–64. Online at pld.chadwyck.com.
PP: Piers Plowman
ST: Summa theologica. See Aquinas in Works Cited.
Walther, Initia carminum: Hans Walther, Initia carminum ac versuum medii aevi posterioris latinorum. 2nd rev. ed. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1969.
Walther, Proverbia: Hans Walther, Proverbia sententiaeque latinitatis medii aevi. 5 vols. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1963–67.
Whiting: Bartlett Jere Whiting, with the Collaboration of Helen Wescott Whiting. Proverbs, Sentences, and Proverbial Phrases From English Writings Mainly Before 1500. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968.
YLS: Yearbook of Langland Studies
Citations of primary works are indicated by editor and year of publication, and so listed in Works Cited, except that works cited from the PL are identified by author and title and the volume and column of the PL. The major editions of Piers Plowman, with their prefaces and notes, and two translations are abbreviated as follows:
Donaldson: William Langland, Will’s Vision of Piers Plowman: An Alliterative Verse Translation by E. Talbot Donaldson. Ed. Elizabeth D. Kirk and Judith H. Anderson. New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1990.
Economou: William Langland’s Piers Plowman, The C Version: A Verse Translation by George Economou. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
K-A: George Kane, ed. Piers Plowman: The A Version: Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman and Do-Well. London: Athlone, 1960. Cited is the Revised Edition (London: Athlone, 1988), with only slight revisions.
KD-B: George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, ed. Piers Plowman: The B Version: Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best. London: Athlone, 1975. Similarly, Revised Edition, 1988.
RK-C: George Russell and George Kane, ed. Piers Plowman: The C Version: Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better and Do-Best. London: Athlone, 1997.
Pearsall: Derek Pearsall, ed. William Langland: Piers Plowman, A New Annotated Edition of the C-Text. Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2008. Occasional reference is made also to the original edition, Edward Arnold, 1978, reissued with corrections by the University of Exeter Press, 1994.
Schmidt: A. V. C. Schmidt, ed. Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions. Volume I, Text. Second ed., Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 2011. Volume II, Part 1, Introduction and Textual Notes; Volume II, Part 2, Commentary, Bibliography and Indexical Glossary. Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 2011. Occasional reference is made also to Schmidt’s earlier William Langland: The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text (whose text is identical to the B text in the Parallel Text Edition). 2nd ed., Everyman, London: Dent, 1995.
Skeat: Walter W. Skeat, ed. The Vision of William concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts. 2 Vols. London: Oxford University Press, 1886; with addition of Bibliography, 1954.
Skeat EETS: The Vision of William concerning Piers Plowman, together with Vita de Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest, and Richard the Redeles, by William Langland. Ed. Walter W. Skeat. Part Four: General Preface, Notes, and Indexes. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by N. Trübner & Co. 1885. EETS, original series 81).
Preface
As I have always done when annotating a text, I have assumed that what puzzles me also puzzles others; I have worked out answers to my puzzles, and then tried to write the note I’d have loved to have to guide me in the first place.
A feature of my commentary is the frequency with which I have cited Latin analogues. I have found it illuminating to use the online Patrologia Latina to deepen my understanding of what lies behind what Langland is saying; and when I have found something relevant I have passed it on. The result, I hope, will help readers see the ideas of the poem in the context of patristic and contemporary Latin culture. I have usually thought it useful to quote the Latin, but everything is translated, so that no one should feel weighed down by the Latin. A second mark of my commentary is its emphasis on comedy. My section has an unusual number of comic scenes and moments, and I have tried to bring that out without being heavy-handed about it.
I have not minded being repetitious, since readers rarely read a commentary straight through. Nor have I minded citing my own essays, most of them from YLS, since nearly all of them sprang out of my work on the commentary, and are a natural extension of it.
I am grateful to the Humanities Institute of the University of California for supporting our project at its outset, and to Yale University, especially the Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, for financial support on several occasions.
I have taught a graduate seminar in the poem a number of times since I started work on the commentary, and I owe a great debt to the students in those courses for helping me understand the poem. Among them, Anne Borelli, Seeta Chaganti, Christopher Cobb, Anna Keller, Nicola Masciandaro, Robert Meyer-Lee, Ray Lurie, Daniel O’Donnell, Mary Peckham, Curtis Perrin, David Rosen, Philip Rusche, George Shuffelton, Jennifer Sisk, Emily Steiner, John Watkins, and Michael Wenthe were particularly helpful. Also, after I retired Ian Cornelius often invited me to his graduate seminars, and I have been helped by his students as well, especially by a group with whom he read the poem in fall of 2014; they read parts of my draft and gave me excellent suggestions, Annie Killian and Emily Ulrich in particular. Also Ian himself read a lot of my work and responded most astutely. One more student gave me crucial help: Max Ehrenfreund. As a Yale College sophomore in 2011, Max read Chaucer, Spenser, and Donne in a course with me, and then told me he wanted to study Piers Plowman. I hired him as a research assistant, and after reading the poem with me he undertook to read my entire commentary in its then state; his sharp queries proved most valuable.
Besides Ian Cornelius, numerous of my colleagues on the Yale faculty have given me valuable help: Wayne Meeks, Harry Atkinson, and Ivan Marcus on the bible, Gene Outka on St Augustine, Denys Turner on medieval vernacular theology, Walter Cahn on medieval art, Howard Bloch on French language and literature. And I greatly miss the stimulation of my conversations about Langland and Chaucer with Lee Patterson, whose untimely death in 2012 was a blow to many of us. So were the deaths of Dorothee Metlitzki in 2001 and Fred Robinson in 2016, my longtime close friends who similarly stimulated and taught me. All through the eighties and nineties and into this century, it was an endless learning experience for me to enjoy being the colleague in the Yale English Department of these three people, and of Marie Borroff and Roberta Frank as well. And as I dwell on the past I want to call up the long-distant past and my first
