The Manuscripts of Piers Plowman: The B-Version by C. David Benson, Lynne S. Blanchfield

Abstract

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER reverted to French for his later works; R. F. Yeager interprets these linguistic choices as thoroughly political—however boldly he spoke out, Gower used the language that would best match the regime and the attitude towards the French war. The language of Eustache Deschamps, Earl Jeffrey Richards argues, shows the continuing tension by the early fifteenth century between ideas of Christian universalism and the concept of a French nation, divinely elected. Another author of French works, Christine de Pisan—in the argument of Anne D. Lutkus and Julia M. Walker—supported the cause of Joan of Arc, even against her king, Charles VII, when he failed to follow her strong advice to seize Paris. In a second essay on the Maid, Susan Crane insists that Joan’s transvestism had significant meaning in terms of her sexuality, and was not merely an incidental aspect of her military and religious mission. The closing essay, by Ellen Caldwell, traces the post-medieval influence of the terrible warfare on the national consciousness of England (heroic valor) and France (tough endurance); she then analyzes one particular work, Shakespeare’s Henry VI, Part 2, as proof that this tradition can likewise be used to question the patriotism and sacrifice demanded by the state in war. If individual essays in this volume will be of most interest and use to the particular inquiries of specialist scholars (who will, inevitably, quarrel with some of the arguments and conclusions), the overall message of the book should be apparent. As the editor writes, ‘‘these essays demonstrate how history influences literature and how literature intervenes in history’’ (3). Richard W. Kaeuper University of Rochester C. David Benson and Lynne S. Blanchfield. The Manuscripts of Piers Plowman: The B-Version. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Pp. 339. $110.00. The manuscripts of Piers Plowman do not provide a pretty picture. There are no deluxe illustrated books such as the Ellesmere manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. The only fully illustrated copy is Bodleian 368 ................. 9680$$ CH16 11-01-10 12:36:50 PS REVIEWS MS Douce 104, in which the pictures are disturbingly crude and awkwardly fitted into the margins. The notorious textual instability of Langland ’s poem is often matched by the messiness of scribal execution. Titles and colophons are typically absent. There is no consistency of ordinatio to organize the contents. Rubrication is erratic. Since Walter W. Skeat’s pioneering work in the mid-nineteenth century, only editors have tended to consult these manuscripts in an effort to reconstruct a literary work that stands at the beginning of the English tradition. Editorial concerns for retrieving the author’s text, however, have diminished the importance of the manuscripts as evidence of larger and more persistent cultural activity. The last two decades have witnessed a new kind of critical interest in these handmade copies as historical artefacts . The cultural poetics of New Historicism insists that medieval meaning is inseparable from medieval usage, so that the understanding of texts such as Langland’s becomes a complex exercise in historical semantics . The material traces of a past culture are embedded in a network of practices that can be subjected to a variety of interpretations and explications. As many as twenty of the approximately fifty-four manuscripts date from the fourteenth century, some perhaps from Langland ’s lifetime. Piers Plowman was copied throughout the fifteenth century and into the sixteenth century, even after Robert Crowley’s printed edition of 1550. Long damned as producers of error, scribes now become professional readers who recorded valuable insights. Marginal markings and annotations that were once considered ugly graffiti have became recognized as valuable evidence for reader responses spanning more than a century when the poem became implicated in the Lollard and antiLollard controversies. Viewed in this light, the manuscripts constitute a rich archive of evidence for recuperating a whole range of historical meanings. Handsomely produced by D. S. Brewer, the scholarly study of David Benson and Lynne Blanchfield makes a timely and important contribution to this new critical enterprise by assisting fuller investigation of these manuscript resources. Their decision to concentrate on the B-text seems appropriate. Since the A-text is...