Written Work: Langland, Labor and Authorship ed. by Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (review)

REVIEWS fites wrote in English. Let us hope she will soon do the same for some of the texts they wrote in Latin. CHRISTINA VON NOLCKEN University of Chicago STEVEN JUSTICE and KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON, eds. Written Work: Langland, Labor and Authorship. Middle Ages Series. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997. Pp. ix, 347. $45.00. The essays in this exciting volume all situate Langland historically. All take their cue from the poet's own most sustained yet enigmatic repre­ sentation of himself, the so-called autobiographical passage, or the au­ thor's "apologia," C-text passus S, lines 1-104, in which Will is interro­ gated about his life by Reason and Conscience. Collectively these essays offer us rich new possibilities for conceptualizing the poet as social and historical agent. The volume should advance Piers criticism irrevocably (I would hope) beyond attempts to mine this passus for biographical facts, or, at the opposite extreme of the critical spectrum, to read it for­ malistically, as inwardly but not outwardly referential. The most excit­ ing contributions are aware that the creator of Piers Plowman was beset by the problem of articulating a new authorial identity commensurate with and able to legitimate the challenging agenda of his writing. The richest readings show that the negotiations in the poet's self-portrayals are also legible in and through their dialogue with the textual and com­ positional histories of the poem. Steven Justice's introduction shows how each of the contributions moves beyond the formalist critical approaches that pull "writing free from contingency." He illustrates the problems associated with formal­ ist approaches to Piers by discussing a problem associated with the B­ text manuscripts, the variant readings in passus 1S of the B-text that may offer evidence for two alternative authorial textual traditions. Kane and Donaldson, Justice proposes, cannot recognize this possibility be­ cause it is at odds with their formalist editorial assumption that there is only one authorially sanctioned B-version of the poem. An edition of the C-text apologia and a parallel modern-English verse 361 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER translation, both by Derek Pearsall, serve as a second preface to the es­ says, but also as the first reading of the text: some of the interpretative problems silently addressed in Pearsall's translation (e.g., the meanings of the words lollare and lyeth) are reopened in the essays. The London location of the C.S passage gives Pearsall the opportunity in an essay called "Langland's London" to explore relationships between the poet's figurative language and his rural and urban environments. He argues that while Langland gives London "vivid and localised expression," he thinks about the ideal society in agrarian terms (pp. 185-86). Two essays consider Langland's persona in relation to religious dis­ courses. Ralph Hanna, in "Will's Work," proposes that Langland uses eremitic discourse for Will's self-depiction to critique the less sophisti­ cated minstrel stance adopted by earlier alliterative poets. Of all of the contributors, Hanna is the least keen to argue for the historical implica­ tions ofhis material, making no "particular claims about any specifiable history external to Piers itself" (p. 24). Lawrence M. Clopper, in "Lang­ land's Persona: An Anatomy of the Mendicant Orders," by contrast, in­ terprets the persona as a composite construct of "Francis's two callings, mendicant and hermit" (p. 17 3), which would have been particularly meaningful for Franciscan readers and would have served to call the or­ der to reform. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton's own contribution, "Langland and the Biblio­ graphic Ego," is one of two extremely long pieces in the volume. Her attempt to understand Langland's self-representation in C.S is richly layered and suggestive. She recognizes the need to develop new theoreti­ cal and historical frames of reference to understand medieval authorial self-representation. She insists on the importance of understanding the modes ofpublication available for politically sensitive writings in medi­ eval culture and is productively alert to the possible impact that audi­ ence response may have had on the continuing composition ofthe poem. She sometimes seems, however, less alert than she might be to the diffi­ culties...