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Article: C. David Benson, Public Piers Plowman: Modern Scholarship and Late Medieval English Culture.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Medium Aevum
- Article date:
- March 22, 2006
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2006 Society for the Study of Mediaeval Languages and Literature. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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C. David Benson, Public Piers Plowman: Modern Scholarship and Late Medieval English Culture (University Park: Pennsylvania State Press, 2003), xix + 283 pp. ISBN 0-271-02315-5. 35.00 [pounds sterling].
David Benson has two plausible projects: to query critical reliance on the 'Langland myth', a broad consensus about the historical life and personality of the poet; and to situate Piers Plowman (which Benson rightly describes as a 'dialogic' and 'polyphonic' poem, pp. 105-7, 137) in relation to more accessible forms of culture. There is little evidence for a historical 'Langland', and recent readers may have underplayed the poem's use of more widely disseminated ...