Piers Plowman

Piers Plowman comes in 4 versions (A, B, C and Z) and there are numerous translations of each. A book can contain any combination of one or more version of the original text and one or more translations, also there may be other matter included such as critical essays etc.

At the moment, the LT work is a mess. Some versions have been separated out but most of them are all lumped together under Piers Plowman. See William Langland for most of them, although there are doubtless a few strays.

What should the policy be for separating out different versions and different translations of versions? How much extra editorial comment and essay material does there have to be to make it a different work even if it is the same translation? And does anyone have a large enough collection of the different editions to sort out which ones are substantially different from the others?

Piers Plowman

This is the work that you are talking about, I think.

The general rule is that translations all belong with the main work. In this case that would mean for each version.

Extra content is always a matter of disagreement. Certainly if there is more extra content than text.

An original text version might come under the ancient languages rule.

However much separation you do, there will always be some editions that stay in a remainders work. Some will not be clear. Others will just plain be wrong.

BTW I forced the touchstone. The 'others' page was rather overwhelming.

I have started by separating out the Norton Critical Edition of the B text, Piers Plowman (Norton Critical Editions), since that has enough extra content to make it substantially different and there seems to be precedent for treating NCEs as different works.

What exactly is the ancient languages rule?

Ancient languages do not get combine with a modern languare version. so Harry Potter and the Philosophers in latin Is separate from modern version and beowulf in old english is not combined with a modern translation.

The current version of the text on the author combine page is:
(2) A Greek edition of Homer is not the same as an English translation. Socially, the former connects you with other Greek scholars, and should recommend other Greek-language works, not the "Classics of Western Civilization" works that the English translation does.

The problem is, at what point do we consider Middle English close enough to modern English that a non-scholar could still pick it up and muddle their way through?

The standard comparandum here would be Chaucer: are all 12,000 some-odd copies of The Canterbury Tales a modern-English rendering? No -- I see within the first few entries under "Editions" that it includes both modern-English renderings by Penguin and Oxford Worlds Classics as well as the Penguin Middle-English version.

Unfortunately for us, Langland is more complicated, for two reasons: (1) he wrote in a West Midlands dialect that is slightly harder for modern English speakers to comprehend, compared to the London-Midlands dialect that Chaucer used; (2) his alliterative verse makes use of far more Anglo-Saxon-rooted and other obscure words, compared to Chaucer's rhyme-royal, which makes use of far more Francophone/Latinate words, the latter of which are more dominant in the modern language.

Thus, an untrained English speaker who can make their way through Chaucer may not have the same felicity with Langland.

(I don't have the time to wade through this morass, but I can at least offer some limited assistance, in the form of the following information:)

I have three editions of Piers:
1. Vision of Piers Plowman (Everyman's Library): http://www.librarything.com/work/304648/details/49593314 (This Everyman's Library is a paperback edition of the Middle English of the B-Text.)
2. William Langland's Piers Plowman: The C Version (Middle Age Series): http://www.librarything.com/work/100197/book/42034282 (This is a translation of the C Version by Georges Economou.)
3. Piers Plowman by William Langland: A New Annotated Edition of the C-Text: http://www.librarything.com/work/100197/book/42030061 (This is Derek Pearsall's most recent edition of Middle English of the C Text -- in my opinion, at least, its "annotations" do not rise to the level of a separate work, and it should be combined with other editions of the Middle English of the C-Text alone).

Frankly, I think that translations should be separated from original Middle-English editions of each text, as the audience for the Economou translation (2 above) will be different from that of the Pearsall edition of C (3 above), though they are currently combined.

But whoever wants to tackle this will be faced with the standard underlying problem: the titles of each Edition do not always make clear either (1) which text version (A, B, C, or now *Z) it is, or (2) whether it is the Middle English text or a translation.

Also most of those who pick up Piers Plowman have more interest in medieval England than those picking up Homer usually do in early Greece.

For both reasons I said 'might'.

For what it's worth, I just looked at the passages in Handbook of Middle English, and while many individual lines are easy to read, I don't get very far before I'm lost.

mmm I find it about as difficult as listening to a Glaswegian. I suspect that some of the words I just don't get will still exist in dialect pockets here, Though regional vocabulary is dying out fast in the uk. on balance don't split. Its different enough to be its own language if it had the proverbial army, but the past is one country that has no army.

#9: I see regular arguments that Middle English shouldn't be split from English, but ISO 639, as well as most scholars, do tend to consider it a separate language.

The whole army thing is a nice quip, but it doesn't really reflect reality. In the modern world, a lot of lingusts--at least the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which does ISO 639-3-tend to be splitters. Communities can be splitters (Valencia from Catalan, Moldovan from Romanian, neither of which do linguists buy at all) or they can join widely disparate dialects. (Arabic is a good example; SIL counts it as 30 different spoken languages, and while Arabic speakers will admit that it's hard to impossible for, say, a Kuwaiti to understand Moroccan spoken Arabic, most consider it all one language.) Arabic is a good example since it has many armies, but one (socially constructed) language. German is interesting, because it has one socially constructed language and many dialects/languages that some promote as separate languages, but not really on country lines. Norwegian and Swedish are easy examples of the quip; northern Norwegian is apparently more similar to northern Swedish then to southern Norwegian, and likewise for northern and southern Swedish.

Let's put it another way: if Middle English isn't a dead language, why is it necessary to make modern English translations?

#11: That presumes a certain definition of what it means to be a separate language. Moreover, that bites both ways; there are modern English translations of Shakespeare (whether or not you think there should be), and many English speakers make their way through Chaucer in the original language without any formal training in Middle English.

I'm generally fine with drawing a line at 1500 and saying that stuff before that was Middle English and stuff after was modern English. But it's clearly an arbitrary line.

The question isn't really whether it is a different language, but whether it is old enough and/or a significant social difference to prevent combination.

13> nods
this nicely undercuts me before i can respond to prosfilaes and lead us all into the wilderness. I do not beleive there is a "significant social difference" between those that read PP in the orginal and those that read it modernised. If they meet at a cocktail party they will both be discussing the message.

My instinct is to agree with BarkingMatt that the very fact translations have been produced demonstrates the importance of the difference. Yes, it is possible to pick your way through and sort-of read it without any help, but you will actually be getting a lot of it wrong since so many of the words have experienced significant changes in meaning, and there will be many, many passages that a Present Day English reader will simply not make any headway with.

And therefore I think there is a significant social difference. A translation can be read for many reasons including the literature, historical references etc. but it is aiming for a different readership from an edition of the ME text which can really only be read by a subset of readers.

Having said all of which, it is going to make for a lot of separate works if we have:
1) ME of A text
2) ME of A text with parallel PDE translation
3) PDE translation/s of A text without ME
4) ME of B text
etc.
13) ME of A + B text
14) ME of A + B + C text
etc.

And one thing we can guarantee would be discussed at the theoretical cocktail party is that LT would have too many PP works!

I therefore think we should consider the following scheme:

1) A text, whether ME or PDE translation or any combination of the two
2) B text, ditto
3) C text, ditto
4) Z text, ditto

In addition there would be:
* The Norton Critical Edition and any others like it that are really anthologies of essays in addition to the text.
* Editions with more than one version in the same volume - there are not in fact so many of these that they can't each qualify as an individual work.
* Part volumes and segments.
* Anything else including anthologies with other ME texts etc.

That is still a lot of works called Piers Plowman but it would lump things together in a reasonably logical fashion and allow readers a reasonable overview of what is available.

(Of course to really allow readers a decent overview we would need to drill down and separate out each translation of each text since they do have significant differences, but then we are back to the problem of a proliferation of works.)

#15: My instinct is to agree with BarkingMatt that the very fact translations have been produced demonstrates the importance of the difference. Yes, it is possible to pick your way through and sort-of read it without any help, but you will actually be getting a lot of it wrong since so many of the words have experienced significant changes in meaning, and there will be many, many passages that a Present Day English reader will simply not make any headway with.

But we also have translations of Shakespeare.

1) A text, whether ME or PDE translation or any combination of the two
2) B text, ditto
3) C text, ditto
4) Z text, ditto


Is that even doable? This needs to be limited by what we can practically do with the data we have.

we would need to drill down and separate out each translation of each text

We don't do that. There may in the future be some level that supports translations, but LT works by definition include all translations into modern languages.

Is that even doable?

Probably not. There are many no-ISBN editions we have no way of tracking down.

And I agree with prosfilaes in #12. My personal view is that sooner or later the lines may need to be redrawn.* But while the line is arbitrary, as long as "common opinion" (in academia) sets the divide at 1500 I'm willing to oblige.

* And I do think Shakespeare and the King James Bible may very well end up on the dead language side of things. But I'm thinking more about my native language (Dutch) which has changed very fast over the last century, and wouldn't presume to make any such call for the English language.

17>Nods apart from natural evolution. That strange american drive to regularise verbs is bound to have an impact.

Nondescript no-ISBN editions could be lumped into the B Text work. That isn't ideal but as a best guess it is the most likely version, and individual owners of editions can separate them back out if we get it wrong. The only other alternative is to have a completely separate 'odds and sods' work, which I think may be more satisfactory in terms of exactness of classification but is far less useful for social purposes.

I have to say that the more I think about it the more I think the idea that all translations except ancient languages should be lumped together is wrong. That may work fine for a modern work still in copyright where there is one official translation. However for anything out of copyright, where there can be several different translations, that becomes very dodgy. The notion that the Skeat translation is the same work as the Schmidt translation, with the same social value and therefore they shouldn't be separated out, strikes me as a doctrine of convenience rather than value.

However let us at least try to make a start by separating out the different versions.

Which raises the question of titles. Should we use the Common Knowledge title to force an explanatory title on each work as in 'Piers Plowman - A text', 'Piers Plowman (B text)' or some similar scheme, or should we leave the titles alone so they adopt whatever the calculated title will be? To force titles will be to make them up, but will be much, much more helpful for anyone looking at either the author page or the result of a search. Since the works will be lumped together from many editions the chances of a simple self-explanatory title for each work arising by the normal process of calculation is limited. In which case anyone doing a search will be presented with a bunch of undifferentiated 'Piers Plowman's and chances are any separation work we have done will be undone down the line by someone helpfully combining them all back together again on the grounds they all have the same title and thus must be the same work.

#19: Nondescript no-ISBN editions could be lumped into the B Text work.

Or all the editions of Piers Plowman can be lumped together. I'm actually leaning towards that; I know it doesn't please the scholars, but it matches what most people owning the work think of it; all the covers I see at http://www.librarything.com/work/304648/covers just say "Piers Plowman", not "Piers Plowman B text".

the more I think about it the more I think the idea that all translations except ancient languages should be lumped together is wrong. That may work fine for a modern work still in copyright where there is one official translation.

How many modern works are there that have just one official translation? There are at least 70 official translations of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. The value is that a French speaker and an English speaker get joined together for having the same books, if they're only separated by translations, whereas splitting translations would lose any cross-language connections. It has consequences, but even the books where the translations have major social differences, most people don't care; they want to read the Iliad, or Dante's Inferno, or Beowulf, and don't worry about translation.

>19 Peasant:: "Nondescript no-ISBN editions could be lumped into the B Text work."

On the other hand, with our changing perceptions of the value of the C-text and its revisions after the Peasant's Revolt (via the work of e.g. Steven Justice, Derek Pearsall, and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton), another generation from now, the C-text may become the "default" for study, rather than the B-text.

>20 prosfilaes:: "Or all the editions of Piers Plowman can be lumped together."

I vehemently and in the strongest terms disagree. At minimum, the A-text (and whatever the *Z-text may be, as I'm not yet convinced of its authenticity) is a vastly different beast from the B-text; and the social value of the revisions into the C-text, responding as many of them did to the unintended use of Piers (B) by the Peasant's Revolt, is crucial.

nods even in quite modern works translations can vary enormously look at Kristin Lavransdatter for example. however that is the way Tim drew the line and that is how it stays... mostly.

> another generation from now, the C-text may become the "default" for study, rather than the B-text.

Yes, a good point, but for now most editions where the owner doesn't care to put in any greater details will probably be the B-text, so I reckon that is our best guess for separating and combining. It was a suggestion for a practical solution rather than an ideal one. Hopefully once the different texts are separated out and clearly labelled most new copies will be assigned to the correct version by their owners and the database.

> I vehemently and in the strongest terms disagree.

Seconded. LibraryThing isn't just about some presumed social connection between readers of a generic group of works. It can and is used for many other purposes. And facilitating people who appreciate the nuances of the differences between complex texts like this is surely just as valuable as connecting people who think there is just one PP. Especially since we can use the work to work relationship to link the later.

The Z-text proves the point perfectly - there is no way it can be lumped in with the others in any useful or meaningful way. One might as well say all the Harry Potter books should be lumped together because they all have Harry Potter in the title.

I think Spenser's faerie queen is easily as incomprehensible

23: Yes, but isn't facilitating the appreciatiation the nuances of the differences between complex texts like this a job for the editions layer.

The work layer is for a more general appreciation: for instance the appreciation that some other poor person struggled through this in college (or, like me, didn't, feels guilty, and so, keeps it in their library to read "someday")

Edited to fix typo and appearance.

25: The editions layer is next to useless though. No sane person wants to wade through the hundreds of misspellings and apparently identical versions to work out exactly which real editions actually exist*. And there is no information associated with the editions layer - it can't be used to find out which translations exist or any information about an individual edition. It can't even be used to link directly to that edition on say Amazon or Google Books where the needful information might be found.

Short of waiting until actual true editions are provided for on LT**, with a complex work like PP - where there are real and significant differences in the main text depending on which version and which translation of that version you own - it is simpler and more useful for the reader if we separate out each version and (for best practice) translation into an individual work. Then each work can correctly list the translator, any other contributors like who wrote the introduction, and have a description describing which version or versions it contains, and will link correctly to that actual work on Amazon etc.

Don't forget we will use the work-to-work relationship feature to link them, so those who wish to be linked to other people who also haven't read it can still find one another. The only other alternative might be to link them via making a series, but that seems to be stretching the definition of a series.

* Hence the reason we are spending more time discussing the problems of combining/separating rather than just quickly doing the actual work! :D

** True editions in the publishing sense, as opposed to title/ISBN spelling variations, which is what we have at the moment.

I was advocating waiting for the true editions layer. I think this split is too esoteric to be done at the work level. I have dozens of medieval texts that I want split by the original manuscript they are derived from, but most people would not be happy if we split up Le lai de Chevrefeuille by the British Library and the Biblioteque Nationale manuscripts.

#26: Translations don't get split out. That's the rule for LT.

Let me try to explain why, at minimum, the three (or four) textual variants should be separate works:

*(Z): Appearing in one manuscript (Bodley 851), this consists of the Prologue and 8 passus, followed by about 100 lines of the A-text, and then completed by the C-text from Passus 10 to the end. I am not yet convinced that Skeat wasn't correct in dismissing it as simply a poor copy of the A-text, rather than a prior version.

(A): The A-text essentially breaks off at the end of Passus 12, and was left incomplete (theories abound as to why, many centering on the tearing of the pardon in Passus 7 and the crises of epistemological authority that it portended), at about a total of 2,500 lines.

(B): The B-text revises A and completes the second half (up to Passus 20), and is over 7,000 lines long.

(C): The C-text was likely a revision of the B-text, in part as a response to the ways the B-text was used in the Peasant's Revolt of 1381. It substantially revises various portions of the text, including the addition of the famous autobiographical passage in Passus 5, the omission of the tearing of the pardon in Passus 7, and the rearrangement of much of the material, thus extending the number of passus to 22 (and a Prologue), though the final two passus (19 and 20 in the B-text) are left essentially unchanged.

The differences between these three texts is not simply that of the second and third editions of a textbook. Rather, they are vast and significant:

(1) A vs. B/C: At minimum, the relationship between A and then B&C would fall under the part/whole rule for NOT combining, as one could say that the A-text represents The Fellowship of the Ring, while the B- and C-texts represent versions of the complete Lord of the Rings trilogy -- and the part/whole rule specifically forbids combining sub-parts of the trilogy with its entirety.

(2) The revisions between B and C are both intellectually and socially significant, comparable to the different versions of Wordsworth's The Prelude (which, however, is rarely published in anything except the final 1850 version, or when the early versions are published, they are together with the final version).

(Of course, the argument could be made that the complex state of the manuscripts, in which most are a conglomeration of parts of all three texts, is evidence that all Piers Plowman editions should be lumped into a single work. On the other hand, the independence of the versions also seems reflected by the very fact that some manuscripts indicate that a copyist who had initial access to the A-text, for example, would seek out copies of the B- or C-text so that he could finish the story.)

> 4: beowulf in old english is not combined with a modern translation

Ideally, yes. In practice it's very hard to find out what's what though - especially for no-ISBN editions.

> 9: That's not the point - I think - is it? Yes, there might possibly be some sub-group of English speakers that might possibly still understand some of those words. But it's not exactly standard English, is it?

As I see it: Is middle English a dead language* or are there any native speakers left? (I happen to think of it as a dead language.)

* Just like middle German, middle French, middle Dutch, etc.

>30 Nicole_VanK:: "I happen to think of it as a dead language"

In which case, as I pointed out in (6) above, someone needs to take a whack at the 12,000-some-odd copies of Canterbury Tales, as within the first few entries under "Editions" it includes both modern-English renderings by Penguin and Oxford Worlds Classics as well as the Penguin Middle-English version.

To be honest, I'm not sure that doing so would make sense ... which brings us back to Piers, and me perhaps changing my mind and thinking that perhaps translations should remain combined with original-language editions.

But I stand firm on the conviction that the *Z, A, B, and C texts should remain separated!

ETA: That is, I endorse Peasant 's schema in post 15.

I fully agree, but I'm not the person to do anything about it- I have plenty of problems with middle Dutch vs. modern Dutch editions of works. (I would , if asked upon, be willing to try to help out though).

>30 Nicole_VanK:

I know that I've been able to read Chaucer with the help of a glossary. (I can do the same for Swedish that's about as old. And I sometime need a gloss for Strindberg, whose Swedish is "modern"). As long as there are people who can read Middle English without taking a course in it, I don't think we are justified in separating. The dead language rule is there because we know that those that reads Harry Potter in Latin (or Hamlet in Klingon) does so for a reason different than (at least some of) the people who read it in English.

29> socially significant

Social significance as it applies to work combination has to do with the social differences between the readers of the work, not the social differences between different editions of the work.

>34 jjwilson61:: "the social differences between the readers of the work"

Does that not apply to readers of the work in 1381?

More so than almost any other work in the Middle English canon, differences in readership and reception had direct and important impacts on both the evolution of the work from B-text to C-text and the place of the work within society as a whole -- thus why we have a whole genre of Piers Plowman literature, e.g. as gathered in The Piers Plowman Tradition. In a sense, one could even say that Piers was the first work of English literature to inspire fan faction fiction.

35> Does that not apply to readers of the work in 1381?

Not unless they were LT members.

I think it comes down to, do most people who have this work care if they have the A, B, or C text? I believe the cocktail party that Tim refers to is a social party with people from different walks of life and not a specialists convention. I don't believe that if you asked a random person if they had read Piers Plowman that the answer would be "the A or the B text?".

Without having read the work but with this thread's information, I perhaps would ask that...

Can we safely say that the books that don't mention their text in the title use the B-text? In which case, there's no reason not to combine those with the explicitly B-texts and leave the explicitly A/C/Z texts separate.

not safely but the balance of probability is such that its not a bad call with a disambiguation notice.