Piers Plowman

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Piers Plowman, facsimile , Bodleian Library

Piers Plowman (dated approx. 1360 to 1399), also known as Visio Willelmi de Petro Plowman ("Williams Vision of Piers the Ploughman"), is the title of a Middle English allegorical tale by the author William Langland .

The work was written in non-rhyming alliterative verses, which are divided into different passus , i.e. sections. Piers Plowman , along with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, is one of the first great works of English literature.

content

The poem - partly theological allegory , partly social satire - is about the narrator's search for the “true Christian life”, the point of view corresponds to the prevailing medieval Catholic worldview . The narrator's search causes a series of dreams and visions in the course of the work and leads to the consideration of three allegorical characters: Dowel ( Do-Well , also “Tu-gut”), Dobet ( Do-Better ), and Dobest ( Do-Best ).

The poem begins in the Malvern Hills , a landscape in Worcestershire, England . The narrator, a man named Will , falls asleep under a tree and has a vision in his sleep. In his vision he sees a tower on a hill and a (dungeon) fortress in a deep valley. Between these two symbols for heaven and hell he sees a field full of people of all kinds, these represent humanity in itself. The narrator is now approached by Piers , the “title hero” of the play, who offers himself as a guide in the narrator's search for truth. The last part of the work is about the narrator's search for the aforementioned Dowel , Dobet and Dobest .

Title and authorship

It is generally believed that Piers Plowman was written by William Langland , an author who is very little known. The assignment of the poem is mainly based on an existing manuscript from the early 15th century , which is available in Trinity College , Dublin as "MS 212". In this manuscript of the so-called C-Text, the piece is attributed to a Willielmus de Langlond :

Memorandum quod Stacy de Rokayle pater willielmi de Langlond ... predictus willielmus fecit librum qui vocatur Perys plowman.

("It should be remembered that Stacy de Rokayle was the father of William de Langlond ... the said William created the book called Piers Plowman.")

Other manuscripts name “ Robert ” or “ William langland ” or “ Wilhelmus W. ” (as an abbreviation for “ William of Wychwood ”) as the author .

Langland's assignment is based on internal sources, such as an apparently autobiographical section in passage 5 of the C text. The first name of the narrator is Will in all copies , and Langland (or Longland ) as a surname can also be read from allusions: “I have lyved in londe ... my name is long will” (B.XV.152). This type of coding through puns was widespread in late medieval literature. Nevertheless, Langland's authorship has not yet been conclusively clarified.

When the first printed editions of Piers Plowman appeared in the 16th century , the work was initially attributed to well-known authors such as John Wyclif or Geoffrey Chaucer . Alternatively, it was seen as the work of an anonymous scribe in the tradition of the peasant uprising of 1381 around John Ball . It was assumed that the figure of the pier was an alter ego of the author himself. The first printed editions show the name “ Robert Langland ” in the introduction. Langland is described here as the likely protégé of Wyclifs . When it went to press, the name The Vision of Piers [or Pierce] Plowman was not determined until the 16th century , which was actually only the common name of a single section of the poem.

In parts of Medieval Studies there is also a tendency to favor multiple authorship for Piers . It is assumed that the poem is the work of two to five authors (depending on how authorship is defined). As a compromise between “single” and “multiple authorship”, textual criticism emphasizes the role of the writer as a kind of “semi-author”.

The text

Piers Plowman is probably one of the greatest challenges in Middle English textual criticism . At least 50 manuscripts and fragments are known. None of these texts (probably) originated from the author himself, no text is a copy of someone else, and all have distinctions. Modern research continues to fall back on a first classification by Walter Skeats , who published the text in 1867. He has argued that there were only three authoritative or reliable manuscripts, the A and B text as well as the already mentioned C text, although the definition of “relevant” in this context would certainly be problematic. According to Skeat's theory, these texts represent three different stages in the development of the work by the author. Although an exact date of the three texts is still open, it is generally assumed that they are the work of a single author, which has continued over 20-25 years. According to this theory, the A-Text was written around 1367 to 1370, making it the oldest. It is considered unfinished and has about 2500 lines. The B-Text was written around 1377 to 1379, it contains A, but contains further "material" and is almost three times as long as A with 7300 lines. The C-Text comes from the 1380s as a revision of B, except for the last section. There is disagreement in research as to whether the C-Text can be considered complete or not. Compared to B there are both extensions and omissions, so that the lengths of B and C are more or less the same.

Some experts see C as a conservative revision of B with the aim of separating the work from the Lollards , the radicalism of a John Ball and the peasant uprising , because Ball had appropriated piers and other characters of the poem for his own sermons and speeches . However, the evidence for this theory is thin and there is much to be said against it.

Edition and reception

14.-15. Century John Ball , a priest involved in the peasant uprising of 1381 , used the figure of the pier in his sermons and writings. Existing assumptions that the work was in connection with the demands of the Lollards were strengthened. For this reason, the author's real intentions and goals and his attitude towards revolt remained opaque and still are today. Undoubtedly because of Ball's writing, the contemporary Dieulacres Abbey Chronicle refers to Piers in connection with the revolt , here he appears as a real person, even as one of its leaders next to Ball. Piers was also understood as an “apocalyptic work, whose hero, Peter the Ploughman who is the incarnation of Christ as judge of the rich ”.

At this time, Piers himself is often named as the author of the work, although this can be completely excluded from the text. Perhaps Piers was also seen as a mask behind which the real author was hiding. The identification of the author with the ideal character of the work would have been more important for the reader than the actual disclosure of the author as will in the text. Ironically, Will's true identity was forgotten over time.

In some - albeit biased - contemporary chronicles of the peasant uprising, John Ball and the Lollards are mentioned as masterminds of the revolt. In this context, Piers also falls into the twilight of heresy and rebellion. There is no evidence, however, that the author or the early editors of the work could have been anti-monarchist in any way. If you look at the C-Text as the author's revision of an earlier version in order not to be associated with the revolt, you also see the probably true core of the work: not the revolt, but the reform of the church, not innovation rather, the aim is to restore values ​​believed to be lost.

16th - 18th century It is noticeable that there is no printed edition of Piers Plowman from the printing works of William Caxton , who otherwise published an enormous number of works. Perhaps the reservations were too great to be brought into the environment of a John Wyclif , perhaps there was also a publication ban against the pier , which, however, cannot be proven with certainty. Perhaps it was just editorial reservations (language, meter ) that prevented it from being printed. Handwritten copies are still common until the 1530s under the Catholic knight Adrian Fortescue . The first printed edition was published by Robert Crowley in 1550. A reprint took place in 1561, although the first page (with the name of the author) was omitted. This further contributed to the fact that the name Langlands was little or no known and instead Piers / the narrator himself was accepted as the author. It would be the last publication until the beginning of the 19th century.

19. – 20. Century Due to his ancient language and worldview, Piers Plowman was almost completely forgotten by the beginning of the 19th century. Only Thomas Whitaker undertook a republication on the basis of the C-text in 1813. Whitaker's edition is now considered to be the beginning of a tradition of “authentic” editions that focus on textual authenticity.

Today is one of Piers Plowman to the fixed canon of English literature and is still an integral part of research and teaching .

literature

Footnotes

  1. ^ Jacques Le Goff : Art. Work. Part V: Middle Ages . In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie (TRE), Vol. 3, pp. 626–635, here p. 633.

Web links