Langland's Early Modern Identities [Paperback]

This book uses the methodologies of cultural studies and the history of the book to show how editors and readers of the Sixteenth through the early Nineteenth century successively remade Piers Plowman and its author according to their own ideologies of the Middle Ages.Introduction: Langland as an Early Modern Author Chapter 1: The Birth of Langland Chapter 2: A Proliferation of Plowmen Chapter 3: Langland Anthologized Chapter 4: Langland Recontextualized Chapter 5: Fictions of Authorship, Fictions of English Literature

This volume is well researched and thorough, and seems unlikely to be replaced any time soon as a critical guide to these materials. - Sixteenth Century Journal

Palgrave's New Middle Ages series, under the editorship of Bonnie Wheeler, continues to publish some of the best new work on medieval literature, history and culture, and Sarah Kelen's book enters this lineup as an admirable contribution to reception-history by tracing the ways that Langland's Piers Plowman has been understood among readers from the Reformation to the early twentieth century...Kelen's book is packed with interesting information, rich in critical insights, and steadily informed by a generous review of current criticism as well as primary sources. - The Medieval Review

This is a wonderfully fresh and scrupulous guide to, and reflection on, the early modern reception history of Piers Plowman and its maker. Kelen s balanced, witty, and clear treatment of how critics, writers, editors and anthologies have shaped and commented on the poem and the poet provides a vademecum for medievalists wishing to reflect on the development of their materials and assumptions. And like the best studies of medievalism, Kelen s study also offers a new perspective on post-medieval literary and critical history. This is a quietly fascinating guide to a major branch of scholarly and literary postures and outlooks from the Renaissance through the RomanticslÃq