Langland's Library

Sponsoring Organization(s)

International Piers Plowman Society

Organizer Name

Michael Johnston, Ellen K. Rentz

Organizer Affiliation

Purdue Univ., Claremont McKenna College

Presider Name

Ellen K. Rentz

Paper Title 1

Quasi Scintilla: Reading Langland Florilegially

Presenter 1 Name

M. Leigh Harrison

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Independent Scholar

Paper Title 2

Vernacular "Histories" in a Latin Anthology: Reading Piers Plowman and the Book of Sir John Mandeville in Cambridge University Library MS Dd.1.17

Presenter 2 Name

Karrie Fuller

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. of Notre Dame

Paper Title 3

Wrestling with Angels: William Langland Reads Robert Grosseteste

Presenter 3 Name

Nicholas Watson

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Harvard Univ.

Start Date

16-5-2015 3:30 PM

Session Location

Valley III Stinson Lounge

Description

This session's papers engage with the intellectual, literary, and codicological contexts of Piers Plowman, including Langland’s sources, models, and pre-texts. The sorts of questions to be addressed include: What was Langland reading when he wrote the poem? How does Langland engage with the material forms of the manuscript? In what ways might Piers Plowman itself function as a kind of book depository? What else were Langland’s readers reading when they picked up a copy of Piers Plowman? How do codicological contexts enrich or challenge our understandings ofPiers Plowman?

Lawrence Warner