Reviewed by:

• The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 4: C Passūs 15–19; B Passūs 13–17 by Traugott Lawler
• Justin Hastings

As long ago as the 1980s, a group of eminent Langland scholars decided to address a serious gap within Medieval Studies by producing a complete set of explanatory notes for Piers Plowman, one of the greatest works of fourteenth-century vernacular literature. The fruits of these initial discussions have taken the form of The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman. Each of the five volumes in The Penn Commentary brings sustained engagement by an eminent scholar to a section of the poem with the goal of producing a detailed, broad, and comprehensive elucidation of the work’s contexts, cruces, and meaning. As a result, the individual volumes bring their creator’s own scholarly predilections to the fore. Although some critics of the series have viewed this decision as a shortcoming, from my perspective, this plurality of interpretations of a richly allusive and elusive poem is one of The Penn Commentary’s principal strengths. In the fourth volume, Traugott Lawler’s contribution seeks especially to enmesh our understanding of the poem within the Latinate intellectual milieu of the Late Middle Ages. At the same time, he successfully explicates the ludic qualities present in the passūs his stint covers. As anyone who has ever taught the poem knows, explaining the meaning and import [End Page 185] of these passages in contemporary prose requires not only deep knowledge of the poem and its contexts but also an equally sophisticated and nuanced wit.

Piers Plowman survives in a complicated textual state, evincing processes of revision, emendation, and expansion across a twenty-year period beginning in the 1360s. Broad scholarly consensus recognizes three distinct versions within this chronology: the A-version of eleven or twelve passūs depending on manuscript witness, the B-version of twenty passūs, and the C-version of twenty-two passūs. In the early 1980s, A. George Rigg and Charlotte Brewer postulated the existence of a Z-version, though this has not been universally accepted. Like its peers in The Penn Commentary, Lawler’s volume is keyed to the Russell-Kane Athlone edition of the C-version. This choice is perhaps now less controversial than it was at The Penn Commentary’s inception, when the B-version was largely accepted as the most authoritative and complete instantiation of the poem; scholars who prefer to use the B-version should not find locating the analogous passages arduous. The preface also facilitates usage with other common editions of the poem: W. W. Skeat’s edition, A. V. C. Schmidt’s parallel-text edition, and Derek Pearsall’s student edition of the C-text. The section of the poem covered by the fourth volume is markedly different across these versions and editions of the poem, but Lawler’s preface and subsequent commentary enable easy movement within this textual panoply. For each of the five passūs covered by the volume, the commentary on individual passages is preceded by a head-note that contextualizes the passus and its action within the poem’s overarching structure. Both the headnotes and commentary address the broad trajectory of relevant scholarship, drawing readers’ attention to the standard range of interpretations. The commentary, again keyed to the C-version of the poem, explicates each passage, drawing out the differences between, especially, the C- and B-versions of the poem, as well as presenting any crucial textual variants between and among the material witnesses of the versions themselves. Lawler presents these revisions with exemplary clarity. He has done a thorough job of drawing readers’ attention to loci throughout the poem that have thematic or lexical resonances as well as to relevant passages across the entire Penn Commentary.

Following the commentary on the passūs are a Works Cited, Index, and Passages Cited. The Works Cited presents a thorough range [End Page 186] of recent critical approaches, along with the relevant seminal arguments from earlier scholarship...

审核人：

• 佩恩关于码头犁农的评论，第4卷：CPassūs15-19；Traugott Lawler的BPassūs13-17
• 贾斯汀·黑斯廷斯（Justin Hastings）

一个悠久早在上世纪80年代，一群杰出朗兰学者决定制作一套完整的注释，以解决中世纪研究中一个严重的缺口农夫皮尔斯，十四世纪的最伟大的作品白话文学的一个。这些初步讨论的成果采取了“佩恩犁农的宾州评论”的形式。《宾夕法尼亚评论》共五卷使一位杰出的学者持续参与到诗歌的一部分中，以期对作品的背景，关键和意义进行详细，广泛和全面的阐释。结果，各个书册将其创作者自己的学术爱好推向了高潮。尽管该系列的一些评论家认为此决定是一个缺点，但从我的角度来看，对一部寓言丰富而难以捉摸的诗作的这种多种解释是《宾州评论》的其中一项的主要优势。在第四卷中，特劳格特·劳勒（Traugott Lawler）的著作尤其寻求在中世纪晚期的拉丁语知识环境中融合我们对诗歌的理解。同时，他成功地阐释了他的护照封面上的讽刺意味。正如任何曾经教过这首诗的人都知道的那样，在当代散文中解释这些段落的含义和意义[End Page 185]不仅需要对诗歌及其上下文有深入的了解，而且还需要同样精巧细腻的机智。

皮尔斯·普罗曼（Piers Plowman）在复杂的文字状态中生存，经历了从1360年代开始的二十年间的修订，修正和扩展过程。广泛的学术共识认可该编年史中的三个截然不同的版本：取决于手抄证人的11或12个passūs的A版本，20个passūs的B版本和22个passūs的C版本。在1980年代初期，A。乔治·里格（George Rigg）和夏洛特·布鲁尔（Charlotte Brewer）提出了Z版本的存在，尽管这尚未被普遍接受。就像在《宾夕法尼亚评论》中的同龄人一样，劳勒的著作也以C版本的罗素·凯恩·阿斯隆版为准。现在，这种选择可能不像《宾夕法尼亚评论》（Penn Commentary）那样引起争议。最初，B版本被广泛接受为这首诗的最权威和最完整的实例；宁愿使用B版本的学者，也不应发现很难找到类似的段落。该序言还便于与该诗的其他常见版本配合使用：WW Skeat的版本，AVC Schmidt的并行文本版本以及Derek Pearsall的C文本学生版本。第四卷所涵盖的诗的各个部分在这些诗的各个版本中都有明显的不同，但是劳勒的序言和随后的注释使在这部诗集中可以轻松地移动。对于本卷涵盖的五个段落中的每一个段落，在对各个段落的评论之前都带有一个标题，该标题将段落及其在诗的总体结构中的作用进行了情境化。标题和评论都涉及相关学术研究的广泛轨迹，从而引起读者对标准解释范围的关注。该评论再次以诗的C版本为重点，阐述了每一节内容，特别指出了诗的C版本和B版本之间的差异，并提出了材料之间和材料之间的关键文本变体。版本本身的见证人。Lawler以示例清晰的方式介绍了这些修订。他做了详尽的工作，以引起读者对这首诗的关注，这首诗具有主题或词汇上的共鸣，以及整个诗篇中的相关段落。再次以这首诗的C版本为基调，阐明每段经文，特别是指出该诗的C版本和B版本之间的差异，并介绍该诗的主要见证人之间以及他们之间的任何重要文本变体。版本本身。Lawler以示例清晰的方式介绍了这些修订。他做了详尽的工作，以引起读者对这首诗的关注，这首诗具有主题或词汇上的共鸣，以及整个诗篇中的相关段落。再次以这首诗的C版本为基调，阐明每段经文，特别是指出该诗的C版本和B版本之间的差异，并介绍该诗的主要见证人之间以及他们之间的任何重要文本变体。版本本身。Lawler以示例清晰的方式介绍了这些修订。他做了详尽的工作，以引起读者对这首诗的关注，这首诗具有主题或词汇上的共鸣，以及整个诗篇中的相关段落。宾夕法尼亚评论。

在对passūs的评论之后是被引用的作品，索引和被引用的段落。《被引著作》提供了近期批评方法的详尽范围[End Page 186]，以及来自较早奖学金的相关开创性论据...