Editing Piers Plowman: The Evolution of the Text (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Series Number 28) (Volume 0)

Brewer, Charlotte

ISBN 10: 0521024021 / ISBN 13: 9780521024020

Published by Cambridge University Press, 2006

About this Item

459 pages. Brown cloth binding lacks dust jacket. Quite discrete ex-library stamps of university, the book was never circulated, almost certainly remains unread, and has no markings at all on the text pages. Paper is bright and binding is sound.

Seller Inventory # 4J13

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Editing Piers Plowman: The Evolution of the Text (Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature, Series Number 28) (Volume 0)
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Date: 2006
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0521024021
• ISBN 13: 9780521024020
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Seller catalogs:
  • Bibliography

About this title

Synopsis

The fifty-plus manuscripts of Piers Plowman have always posed a puzzle to scholars. This book is an account of the editions of the poem that have appeared since 1550, when it was first published by the protestant reformer Robert Crowley. It examines the circumstances in which the editions were produced, the lives and intellectual motivations of the editors, and the relationship between one edition and the next. It uses a wide range of published and unpublished material to shed light on attempts to crack one of the major editorial conundrums in medieval studies.

Review

"The volume is outstanding for the wealth of evidence Brewer brings to the topic. I find this a penetrating and provocative book. I think Brewer forces into the center of discussion the variety of ways inwhich editors have often forgotten...the varying assumptions that underlie their efforts at retrieving an author's ipsissima verba. Brewer's volume stands...as an impressive plea for both editorial conciousness and conscientiousness." Ralph Hanna, Speculum

"What Brewer demonstrates...are the ways in which general editorial theories are implicated in historical contexts and, more particularly, in which views on the authorship of Piers Plowman and the number and character of its versions are implicated in one another." An Interdisciplinary Annual of Textual Studies