Reading Piers Plowman

A lucid and comprehensive study of Piers Plowman, one of the most magnificent literary works of the Middle Ages.

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.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, Christian 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.