Reading Piers Plowman (Reading Writers and their Work) - Hardcover

Steiner, Emily

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0521868203 ISBN 13: 9780521868204

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2013

Synopsis

Reading "Piers Plowman" is an indispensable scholarly guide to a magnificent - and notoriously difficult - medieval poem. With Piers Plowman, the fourteenth-century poet William Langland proved that English verse could be at once spiritually electrifying and intellectually rigorous, capable of imagining society in its totality while at the same time exploring heady ideas about language, theology and culture. In her study of Piers Plowman, Emily Steiner explores how Langland's ambitious poetics emerged in dialogue with contemporary ideas; for example, about political counsel and gender, the ethics of poverty, secular and pagan learning, lordship and servitude, and the long history of Christianity. Lucid and comprehensive, Steiner's study teaches us to stay alert to the poem's stunning effects while still making sense of its literary and historical contexts.

About this title

Book Description:

The great fourteenth-century poem Piers Plowman is one of the most dazzling literary creations of the English Middle Ages. Emily Steiner's book, indispensable to students and scholars, shows readers how to navigate the poem's experimental poetics, as well as its complex ideas about love, salvation and social justice.

About the Author:

Emily Steiner is Associate Professor of English Literature and an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania. She is presently co-editor (with Rebecca Davis and Lawrence Warner) of the Yearbook of Langland Studies. She is the author of Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0521868203
• ISBN 13: 9780521868204
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 278