The Library
Monologic langland : contentiousness and the ‘Z Version’ of Piers Plowman
Tools
Wood, Sarah (2017) Monologic langland : contentiousness and the ‘Z Version’ of Piers Plowman. Review of English Studies, 68 (284). pp. 224-243. doi:10.1093/res/hgw138 ISSN 0034-6551.
|
PDF
WRAP-monologic-langland-contentiousness-Wood-2017.pdf - Accepted Version - Requires a PDF viewer. Download (1077Kb) | Preview |
Official URL: http://doi.org/10.1093/res/hgw138
Abstract
The copy of Piers Plowman in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 851, the so-called ‘Z text’, has recently attracted renewed attention as a scribal version of considerable intrinsic interest. I here reexamine Z alongside another notorious scribal version, the ABC splice in Huntington Library, MS HM 114 (Ht). The promulgation of Piers Plowman in multiple versions encouraged the scribal redactors of both manuscripts to reimagine the poem in creative ways. While the Ht redactor enhanced the role of Piers Plowman at the expense of the dreamer Will, the Z redactor offered a more sentimentalized version of Piers and often expanded the ‘I’ of the dreamer. By inserting himself into the ‘I’ of the dream vision, the Z redactor authorized his own compositions while simultaneously enhancing those ‘monologic’ moments at which the dreamer offers apparently authoritative interpretation of his visions. Z’s most notable textual omission, which concludes the poem just before the tearing of the pardon, belongs to a consistent pattern in which the redactor eliminates moments of debate and opposition and expands passages of monologic commentary. Rather than an authorial draft as sometimes argued, the Z text represents an intriguing scribal misapprehension of the original poet’s ‘contentious’ compositional style.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Subjects: | P Language and Literature > PR English literature | ||||||||
Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > English and Comparative Literary Studies | ||||||||
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Langland, William, 1330?-1400? -- Piers Plowman -- Criticism, Textual | ||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Review of English Studies | ||||||||
Publisher: | Oxford University Press | ||||||||
ISSN: | 0034-6551 | ||||||||
Official Date: | April 2017 | ||||||||
Dates: |
|
||||||||
Volume: | 68 | ||||||||
Number: | 284 | ||||||||
Page Range: | pp. 224-243 | ||||||||
DOI: | 10.1093/res/hgw138 | ||||||||
Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||||
Publication Status: | Published | ||||||||
Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||||
Date of first compliant deposit: | 8 November 2016 | ||||||||
Date of first compliant Open Access: | 24 December 2018 | ||||||||
Related URLs: |
Request changes or add full text files to a record
Repository staff actions (login required)
View Item |
Downloads
Downloads per month over past year