Piers Plowman: A Guide to the Quotations by John A. Alford (review)

REVIEWS the tools and interests of literary and historical interpretation intersect (pp. 170-71). Moreover, the chief interest of the Chroniques for the historian may lie in itsrevelationof how onelate-medievalwriter conceived of history and history writing. Although these views of the historical value of the Chroniques are not new, they acquire a new clarity and salience when set in the context of Ainsworth's literary reading. T hat reading, it must be said in conclusion, is extraordinarily tactful. Ainsworth not only refuses to identify the category of the literary in the Chroniques with a collection of purple passages only but also warns against insisting on exhaustive exegesis of even the most fully literary segments (pp. 5-6). He testifies to the importance of experiencing the whole of the work, its contrasts, surprises, andrhythms (p. 12) and, while advancing our knowledge of the evolution of Froissart's discursive practices and ideological perspectives, allows the text, as he says (p. 19), to breathe, to retain its mysteries. MONICA MCALPINE University of Massachusetts, Boston JOHN A. ALFORD. Piers Plowman: A Guzde to the Quotations. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 77. Binghamton, N.Y.: Cen­ ter for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton, 1992. Pp. xiii, 153. $9.00. With this volume John A. Alford continues to educate and inform the growing readership of William Langland's extraordinary poem. Like one of the poet's own personifications- Study and Clergy come first to mind­ Alford keeps appearing with outstretched hand to help us, even as they help Long Will, in our search for deeper, if never-to-be-completely­ satisfied-in-this-world, understanding of a lifetime's work. In his editing of A Companion to Piers Plowman (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) and his coediting with M. Teresa Tavormina of the first six volumes of The Yearbook a/Langland Studies, in hisnumerouslearnedarticles, and in this and his earlier reference work, Piers Plowman: A Glossary ofLegal Diction (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988), Alford has made an indispens­ able contribution to the field of Piers Plowman studies. A Guide to the Quotations is based on the Athlone editions of the three 153 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER versions of Piers Plowman: The A ii?rsion, ed. George Kane (London: Athlone,1960); The B ii?rsion, ed. George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson (London: Athlone, 1975); and The C ii?rsion, ed. George Russell (in press). Permission to use a computer printout ofthe Athlone edition ofthe C version along with the two published versions has enabled Alford to compile his guide with the benefits of a full account of variants and a consistent handling of the quotations in all three versions. The three versions ofthe poem contain some 600 individual quotations from Latin and French (1,200 counting repetitions). Alford has organized these quotations in three separate indexes: in the first index the quotations are recorded and listed in the order oftheir appearance in the texts; in the second index the biblical quotations are listed according to their order in the Bible bycitationofbook,chapter,and versefollowedby letter reference to version ofthe poem, passus, and line, e.g., Genesis 2:18 C.18.227; and in the third index the quotations have been arranged in alphabetical order. Users may thus pursue intelligence about the quotations in Piers Plowman from three different perspectives, but they will undoubtedly find the first index, with its rich information about sources and analogues and secondary works comprising eighty-five pages ofthe volume, the most valuable. It would be a mistake, however, for almost all its users, especially those who are relatively new students ofthe poem, to consult this guide without first reading the thirty-page introduction. In it Alford is concerned not so much with preparing his readers to make hands-on use ofthe guide as with educating them about the significance of the numerous editorial and interpretive questions that the quotations raise. In the first part ofthe essay Alford writes about the concerns ofmodern readers ofPiers Plowman that have been revealed by the editorial treatment ofthe quotations in terms of thenumberingoflines,the use ofitalics,and theestablishmentofthe text. It...