Skip to content
1882
Volume 30, Issue 1
  • ISSN: 0890-2917
  • E-ISSN: 2031-0242

Abstract

Abstract

The use of French in shows a predictable orientation toward social relations, ethics, religion, law, and rhetoric; it can signal politeness, pretension, and hypocrisy. But it is not all easily explicable - what do we make of the fact that ‘Piers’ seems in late medieval England to be rather a rare name? In general, however, Langland’s decision to write in English and his irreverential manipulation of anything approaching ‘sources’ means the constant occlusion of the poem’s many French referents. Nevertheless, insofar as the poem does invoke other texts and traditions (French or otherwise), this invariably raises questions with larger social, institutional, structural, and discursive implications.

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1484/J.YLS.5.111404
2016-01-01
2025-12-05

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Primary Sources
    Langland, William, Piers Plowman: A Parallel-Text Edition of the A, B, C and Z Versions, ed. by A. V. C. Schmidt, 2 vols (New York: Longman, 1995; repr. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2008)
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Paston Letters and Papers of the Fifteenth Century, ed. by Norman Davis, Richard Beadle, and Colin Richmond, 3 parts, EETS, 2nd ser., 20, 21, 22 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004–05)
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Two Early London Subsidy Rolls, ed. by Eilert Ekwall (Lund: C. W. K. Gleerup, 1951)
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Secondary Sources
    Britnell, Richard, ‘Uses of French Language in Medieval English Towns’, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c. 1100-c. 1500, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, with Carolyn Collette and et al. (York: York Medieval Press, 2009), pp. 8189
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Burrow, J. A., Langland’s Fictions (Oxford: Clarendon, 1993)
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Butterfield, Ardis, Poetry and Music in Medieval France: From Jean Renart to Guillaume Machaut (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Butterfield, Ardis, The Familiar Enemy: Chaucer, Language and Nation in the Hundred Years War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009)
    [Google Scholar]
  8. Cannon, Christopher, ‘Langland’s Ars grammatica’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 22 (2008), 125
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Cannon, Christopher, ‘Class Distinction and the French of England’, in Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Medieval English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer, ed. by Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013), pp. 4859
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Cannon, Christopher, ‘From Literacy to Literature: Elementary Learning and the Middle English Poet’, Publications of the Modern Language Association, 129 (2014), 349364
    [Google Scholar]
  11. Cannon, Christopher, From Literacy to Literature: England, 1300–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Clark, Cecily, ‘The Early Personal Names of King’s Lynn: An Essay in Socio-Cultural History, Part I—Baptismal Names’, Nomina, 6 (1982), 5171
    [Google Scholar]
  13. Clark, Cecily, ‘The Early Personal Names of King’s Lynn: An Essay in Socio-Cultural History, Part II—By-Names’, Nomina, 7 (1983), 6589
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Clark, Cecily, ‘Onomastics’, in The Cambridge History of the English Language 2, 1066–1476, ed. by Norman Blake (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp. 542606
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Davis, Isabel, ‘Piers Plowman and the Querelle of the Rose: Marriage, Caritas, and the Pecock’s “Pennes”’, New Medieval Literatures, 10 (2008), 4986
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Davis, Virginia, ‘The Popularity of Late Medieval Personal Names as Reflected in English Ordination Lists, 1350–1540’, in Studies on the Personal Name in later Medieval England and Wales, ed. by Dave Postles and Joel T. Rosenthal (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2006), pp. 103114
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Kay, Sarah, Parrots and Nightingales: Troubadour Quotations and the Development of European Poetry (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013)
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Keene, Derek, with a contribution by Alexander R. Rumble, Survey of Medieval Winchester, 2 parts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985)
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Postles, David A., ‘The Baptismal Name in Thirteenth-Century England: Processes and Patterns’, Medieval Prosopography, 13 (1992), 152
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Salter, Elizabeth, ‘An Obsession with the Continent’, in English and International: Studies in the Literature, Art and Patronage of Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 1100
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Steiner, Emily, Reading ‘Piers Plowman’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Summerfield, Thea, ‘“‘Fi a debles’, quath the king”: Language-Mixing in England’s Vernacular Historical Narratives, c. 1290-c. 1340’, in Language and Culture in Medieval Britain: The French of England c. 1100-c. 1500, ed. by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, with Carolyn Collette, Maryanne Kowaleski, and et al. (York: York Medieval Press, 2009), pp. 6880
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Zeeman, Nicolette, ‘Tales of Piers and Perceval: Piers Plowman and the Grail Romances’, The Yearbook of Langland Studies, 22 (2008), 201238
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Zeeman, Nicolette, ‘Langland in Theory’, in A Cambridge Companion to ‘Piers Plowman’, ed. by Andrew Cole and Andrew Galloway (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 214229
    [Google Scholar]
  25. Zumthor, Paul, Toward a Medieval Poetics, trans. by Philip Bennett (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992)
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1484/J.YLS.5.111404
Loading
  • Article Type: Research Article
This is a required field.
Please enter a valid email address.
Approval was a Success
Invalid data
An error occurred.
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error:
Please enter a valid_number test
aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYnJlcG9sc29ubGluZS5uZXQv