Louise M. Bishop, voicemail
346-0733
Class hours: Monday 2:00 to 4:50 pm, 203 Chapman
Office hours (212 Chapman): Wednesday, noon to 2:00 pm, and by appointment
Please note that these office hours are shared with the Clark Honors College
undergraduates; please do knock on the door if it's closed.
The story of English literature may begin with Chaucer's poetry, but fourteenth- and early-fifteenth-century England produced more manuscripts of Piers Plowman than of Chaucer's works. Piers Plowman provides a poetics, including the alliterative long line and allegory, and a politics that is at once royal, Lollard, and agraro-urban to explore issues of individual psychology, social justice, and Christian salvation. The poem minutely examines monarchy, marriage, conscience, sin, and subjectivity itself. Its breadth of interests, depth of inquiry, and manuscript history prevented the poem's appropriation for a literary history that legitimated Lancastrian or, later, Tudor rule. But the poem was claimed as a "proto-Protestant" text in the sole edition (1550) to appear before the Early English Text Society supported W.W. Skeat's editions of three versions (1866-77). The Norton critical edition of the B-text (eds. Elizabeth Robertson and Stephen Shepherd, 2006) will provide our base reading text.
The seminar will situate Langland within what John Bowers calls "the antagonistic tradition" (Chaucer and Langland, Notre Dame, 2008) but also take the full measure of this rich, complex, and deeply-learned poem. Fourteenth-century intellectual and theological debates about kingship, Judaism, the soul, the body, the Eucharist, the active and contemplative lives, and poverty will inform our reading. Besides closely reading the poem and paying some attention to its versions, students will assess the poem's major critical tradition through the analyses of David Aers, James Simpson, Anna Baldwin, Emily Steiner, C. David Benson, Anne Middleton, and Andrew Galloway, among others. Students will have the opportunity to craft papers eligible for submission to the fifth International Piers Plowman Society conference to be held at Oxford in 2011. See http://www.piersplowman.org/ for more on the International Piers Plowman Society. The site includes searchable bibliography produced by the editors of the Yearbook of Langland Studies, and much else useful for a reader of Piers Plowman .
Requirements | Sign-up list for word assignment and weekly expertise | Guidelines for prospectus | Guidelines for annotations | Guidelines for presentation | Weekly reading assignments |
Text available at the UO Bookstore:
Recommended:
1. A brief exercise in Middle English language You'll choose one word from a list, look it up in the Middle English Dictionary, and write a brief paper (about 600 words) on the word's etymology and meanings. Note subtleties and their effect on your reading of the line I've cited and, if you wish, on other lines in the Prologue in which the word appears. Due Monday, April 6. See sign-up sheet for words and line references.
2. Passus/essay expertise. You'll sign up as "go-to" person for one of our class readings. That means that, while everyone will have read the essay/passus, you'll have dug a little deeper. For instance, you'll have spent more time with the MED, you'll read the "optional" readings, or you'll have found on the Langland online bibliography another article to read. Prepare a handout to distribute to the class and me (15 handouts). After class (or before, if you prefer), put your handout on our class's Blackboard site (if you expect others to print your handout before class, please post it to the Blackboard site before 5:00 pm Sunday night). Two students per week, with one exception. Completing this assignment counts for 10% of your grade.
3. Prospectus, annotated bibliography and topic presentation. The sixth week of class you'll provide the class and me, through Blackboard, a prospectus and annotated bibliography for your term paper (I also ask you to provide me hard copy). Besides the written work, you'll take five minutes of class time to present your thesis. Guidelines for prospectus. The prospectus introduces the question at issue/topic you're treating. It includes the steps of your argument and your methodology. It shows the direction you're taking with your paper, and serves essentially as an outline. As such, it can be as few as 500 words, and as many as 2500 or so. Guidelines for your annotations (with thanks to Prof. Lisa Freinkel). Each annotation should be about 200 words and cite the article or book chapter using proper MLA documentation style.
You may certainly include essays from class reading among your sources. But please do include other essays too. I would suggest a minimum of five sources.
Guidelines for presentation Explain (a) the topic you researched, (b) what you discovered, and (d) its relevance for your program of study. Be concise and organized. In your presentation, do not summarize in detail the essays you've read (we already have your annotations). Rather, your presentation's goal is to help us understand some of the ramifications/implications of your topic for Piers Plowman . Practice your presentation to be sure it's five minutes long. Back to top of page, back to top of "Requirements"
4. Recitation of Middle English. Choose a twenty-or-so-line passage from the poem, practice and perfect your reading of it, and come to my office sometime during the term, before finals week, to read it. Completing this assignment counts for 10% of your grade.
5. A term paper (in the vicinity of 4000 words). Due June 1.
Monday, March 30
Primary reading Prologue and Passus 1: the fair field full of folk and Holy Church
Secondary reading Hussey, S. S. "Langland the Outsider," in Minnis, Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions: Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall, York Manuscripts Conferences 5. Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, NY: York Medieval Press in association with Boydell Press, 2001. 129-37.
Optional Anne Middleton's "Introduction" to the poem in A Companion
Aers,David. "Vox populi and the Literature of 1381," in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace (Cambridge UP, 1999). 432-53.
Hudson, Anne. "Piers Plowman and the Peasants' Revolt: A Problem Revisited." Yearbook of Langland Studies (hereafter YLS) 8 (1994): 85-106.
Monday, April 6
Primary reading Passus 2, 3, 4: the marriage of Meed; Conscience, Reason, and the king
Secondary reading Trigg, Stephanie. "The Traffic in Medieval Women: Alice Perrers, Feminist Criticism, and Piers Plowman." YLS 12 (1998): 5-29.
Optional Lees, Clare. "Gender and Exchange in Piers Plowman," in Class and Gender, eds. Harwood and Overing (Indiana UP, 1994). 112-30
Monday, April 13
Primary texts Passus 5, 6, 7: confession of the seven deadly sins, the appearance of Piers the Plowman, and Do-Wel
Secondary reading Kirk,Elizabeth. "Langland's Plowman and the Recreation of Fourteenth-Century Religious Metaphor." YLS 2 (1988): 1-21.
Optional Kaske, R. E. "The Character Hunger in Piers Plowman." Kennedy et al., Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane (Boydell and Brewer, 1988). 187-97.
Monday, April 20
Primary texts Passus 8, 9, 10, 11: the inward wits -- Thought, Will, and Wit; Study, Clergy, and Scripture
Secondary reading Simpson, James. "From Reason to Affective Knowledge: Modes of Thought and Poetic Form in Piers Plowman." Medium Aevum 55 (1986), 1-23
Optional Simpson, James. "The Role of Scientia in Piers Plowman." In Medieval Religious and Ethical Literature, eds. Kratzmann and Simpson (D.S. Brewer, 1986). 49-65.
David Aers, "Class, Gender, Medieval Criticism, and Piers Plowman," in Class and Gender in Early English Literature: Intersections, eds. Harwood and Overing (Indiana UP, 1994), 59-75
Monday, April 27
Primary text Passus 12, 13, 14: Ymaginatif; the feast; Haukyn the active man
Secondary reading Hanna, Ralph. "Langland's Ymaginatif: Images and the Limits of Poetry." Dimmick, Simpson, and Zeeman, Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm (Oxford UP, 2002). 81-94.
Optional Savage,Anne. "Piers Plowman: The Translation of Scripture and Food for the Soul," English Studies 74 (1993): 209-21.
Monday, May 4
Primary text Passus 15, 16, 17: Anima redux, Abraham, the Good Samaritan
Secondary reading Davis, Rebecca. "'Fullynge' Nature: Spiritual Charity and the Logic of Conversion in Piers Plowman." YLS 19 (2005): 59-80.
Optional Clopper, Lawrence M. "Shifting Typologies in Langland's Theology of History." Typology and English Medieval Literature, ed. Hugh T Keenan, Georgia State Literary Studies 7 (New York: AMS Press, 1992). 227-40.
Monday, May 11 Annotated
bibliography and prospectus due
Primary text Passus 18: the Christ-Knight, the Harrowing of Hell
Secondary reading Waldron,R.A. "Langland's Originality: The Christ-Knight and the Harrowing of Hell," Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature, ed. Gregory Kratzman and James Simpson (D.S. Brewer, 1986). 66-81.
Optional Aers, David. "Christ's Humanity and Piers Plowman: Contexts and Political Implications." YLS 8 (1994): 107-25.
Monday, May 18
Primary text Passus 19: the Barn of Unity
Secondary reading Giancarlo, Matthew. "Piers Plowman, Parliament, and the Public Voice."YLS 17 (2003): 135-74.
Optional Wurtele, Douglas. "The Bane of Flattery in the World of Chaucer and Langland." Florilegium 19 (2002): 1-25.
Monday, June 1
Primary text Passus 20: flattery, Conscience, the never-ending story
Secondary reading Aers, David (2000).
"Visionary Eschatology: Piers Plowman." Modern Theology 16.1 (2000): 3-17.
Optional Steiner, Emily. "Piers Plowman, Diversity, and the Medieval Political Aesthetic." Representations 91 (2005), 1-25.