TY - JOUR
T1 - The Ilchester Prologue, the Penultimate Passus of Corpus 201 (F), and a New School of Piers Plowman Textual Studies
AU - Warner, Lawrence
PY - 2019/10/31
Y1 - 2019/10/31
N2 - The recent textual work on Piers Plowman by Ralph Hanna and by Sarah Wood, attacking arguments that early stages of Langland's poem circulated on loose leaves, reverses the logic of convergent variation. Agreements between manuscripts that by definition are signs of genetic relations are deemed coincidental; those that by definition are coincidental are rescued and announced to be meaningful. This essay shows that Hanna's and Wood's approaches to the 'Ilchester Prologue', which they claim to descend from the C archetype, and to the penultimate passus of Corpus 201 (F), which Hanna has announced is a C rather than B text as all editors have said, do not stand up.
AB - The recent textual work on Piers Plowman by Ralph Hanna and by Sarah Wood, attacking arguments that early stages of Langland's poem circulated on loose leaves, reverses the logic of convergent variation. Agreements between manuscripts that by definition are signs of genetic relations are deemed coincidental; those that by definition are coincidental are rescued and announced to be meaningful. This essay shows that Hanna's and Wood's approaches to the 'Ilchester Prologue', which they claim to descend from the C archetype, and to the penultimate passus of Corpus 201 (F), which Hanna has announced is a C rather than B text as all editors have said, do not stand up.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85078107945&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.4.0486
DO - 10.5406/jenglgermphil.118.4.0486
M3 - Article
SN - 0363-6941
VL - 118
SP - 486
EP - 516
JO - JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY
JF - JOURNAL OF ENGLISH AND GERMANIC PHILOLOGY
IS - 4
ER -