Public Piers Plowman

Modern Scholarship and Late Medieval English Culture
This title returns the 14th-century poem "Piers Plowman" to late medieval English culture by treating it as a public rather than a personal or elite work. Divided into two parts, the first is an extended essay on "Piers" scholarship and the second part offers an alternative history of the poem.

The fourteenth-century alliterative poem Piers Plowman was widely popular in its own day. The number of its surviving manuscripts ranks just below that of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Although the poem has been the subject of some interesting recent critical scholarship, it continues to be marginalized by medievalists and non-medievalists alike. According to C. David Benson, this is because the tendency of modern criticism has been to read Piers as an autobiography mired in the singular intellectual obsessions of its author or as a recondite exploration of theological and political issues. In Public Piers Plowman, Benson returns the poem to the center of late medieval English culture by treating it as a public rather than a personal or elite work. In the process, Benson makes this great poem more accessible, exciting, and necessary to modern readers.

UK Delivery:

• Free delivery on all orders of £10 or more.
• £1.49 delivery fee on orders below £10.
• UK orders are shipped via Royal Mail 2nd Class.

International Delivery:

• Flat rate delivery charges vary by country.

Dispatch and Delivery Times:

• All orders are shipped from our warehouse in Northampton, UK within 48 hours of receipt during working hours.
• UK mainland orders typically arrive within 3-5 working days via Royal Mail 2nd Class.
• International estimated delivery times:
• Europe & Channel Islands: 7 to 10 working days
• USA: 7 to 15 working days
• Rest of the World: 9 to 21 working days

View our full delivery infomation here.