Langland

Bibliography

Pearsall, Derek. An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Langland. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1990. For previous bibliographies see items 1-10.

Editions with glosses and explanatory notes:

Bennett, J. A. W., ed. Piers Plowman: The Prologue and Passus I-VII of the B text as found in Bodleian MS. Laud 581, Edited with Notes and Glossary. Oxford: Clarendon, 1972.
Pearsall, Derek, ed. Piers Plowman by William Langland: An Edition of the C-text. London: Arnold, 1978; rpt. Exeter: Univ. of Exeter Press, 1994.
Schmidt, A. V. C., ed. The Vision of Piers Plowman: A Critical Edition of the B-Text Based on Trinity College Cambridge MS B.15.17. 2d ed. London: Dent; Rutland, Vermont: Tuttle, 1995.

Translations

Donaldson, E. Talbot. Piers Plowman: An Alliterative Verse Translation. Ed. Elizabeth D. Kirk and Judith H. Anderson. New York: Norton, 1990. B version, based on K-D text.
Goodridge, J. F. Piers the Plowman: Translated into Modern English with an Introduction. Rev. ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1966. Prose, of the B version based on Skeat's text, but still very useful.

Reference and Background

Alford, John A. Piers Plowman: A Glossary of Legal Diction. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1988.
-----. Piers Plowman: A Guide to the Quotations. Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1992.
Fasciculus Morum: A Fourteenth-Century Preacher's Handbook. Ed. and trans. Siegfried Wenzel. University Park: Pennsylvania State Univ. Press, 1989. Illustrates penitential tradition and seven deadly sins.
Mann, Jill. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1973.
Pantin, W. A. The English Church in the Fourteenth Century. South Bend: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1963.

Studies and Criticism

Aers, David. Chaucer, Langland and the Creative Imagination. London: Routledge, 1980. Langland's implicit dialectic with social and ecclesiastical ideologies.
Alford, John A., ed. A Companion to Piers Plowman. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1988. Excellent introductory articles by major scholars.
Burrow, John. Langland's Fictions. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
Emmerson, Richard K. Antichrist in the Middle Ages. Seattle: Univ. of Washington Press, 1981.
Frank, Robert W., Jr. Piers Plowman and the Scheme of Salvation: An Interpretation of Dowel, Dobet and Dobest. Yale Studies in English 136. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1957. Remains a valuable overview of the poem in its context.
Hill, Thomas D. "Universal Salvation and Its Literary Context in Piers Plowman B.18," YLS 5 (1991): 65-76.
Simpson, James. Piers Plowman: An Introduction to the B-Text. London: Longman, 1990. A lucid introduction that sees Langland critical of conventional thought and institutions.
Szittya, Penn R. The Antifraternal Tradition in Medieval Literature. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1986.
Tavormina, M. Teresa. Kindly Similitude: Marriage and Family in Piers Plowman. Cambridge: Brewer, 1995.
Wittig, Joseph S. William Langland Revisited. Twayne's English Author Series. New York: Prentice Hall, 1997.