Abstract
The sixteenth-century readers of Piers Plowman who first attempted to make public the poet’s identity had little evidence to go on. Despite this, they did attempt to transmit a biography of the poet as an adjunct to his poem. Medieval authors sometimes named themselves in their works, but when they did so, it was by way of autocitation more than autobiography. 1 Authors might name themselves in their works, but without much psychological detail.2 To take one well-known example, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to his weight in the House of Fame, and to his works in both the Legend of Good Women and the so-called Retraction of the Canterbury Tales.3 However, his works never refer to either his professional or emotional life. We know of Chaucer’s marriage, as well as his services as a customs official, clerk of the king’s works, and a member of parliament, but not because he mentions any of them in his poetry.
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Notes
A. J. Minnis relates medieval authors’ self-referentiality to scholastic literary theories of auctoritas, noting in particular the different claims to authority in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower; Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages, second ed. (Aldershot, UK: Scolar Press, 1988), Chapter 5: “Literary Theory and Literary Practice.”
Christine de Pizan, The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, trans. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Kevin Brownlee, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (New York: W. W Norton and Co., 1997), 90–91.
Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image—Music—Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1977), 142. On the sixteenth-century rise (or “birth”) of the author, see Kevin Pask, The Emergence of the English Author: Scripting the Life of the Poet in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).
The overdetermined authorizing gestures inherent in the 1616 edition of James’s Workes are discussed by Jeffrey Masten, Textual Intercourse: Collaboration, Authorship, and Sexualities in Renaissance Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 67–73. The political underpinnings and literary context of Chaucer’s 1532 canonization in Thynne’s first edition are discussed by John Watkins, “ ‘Wrastling for this world’: Wyatt and the Tudor Canonization of Chaucer,” in Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance, ed. Theresa M. Krier (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), 21–39.
OED, s. v. “anonymal” and “anonymous.” Anonymal was originally the word applied to texts whose authors are unnamed; “anonymal” entered the language in the sixteenth century and disappeared in the seventeenth century, around the time that “anonymous” (originally a noun designating a person whose name is unknown) gained its adjectival meaning: “Bearing no author’s name; of unknown or unavowed authorship.”
For a full treatment of the relationship between Piers Plowman and the 1381 rebels, see Steven Justice, Writing and Rebellion: England in 1381. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1994).
As an Appendix to “Kynde Name,” Anne Middleton lists all the “signatures” by name or anagram that she sees in the poem’s three texts. Middleton, “William Langland’s ‘Kynde Name’: Authorial Signature and Social Identity in Late Fourteenth-Century England,” in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1530, ed. Lee Patterson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, University of California Press, 1990), 15–82; the Appendix is pp. 80–82. The signature occurs in this form only in the B text of the poem. All quotations from the B text of the poem are from George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, eds., Piers Plowman, the B version: Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best, by William Langland (London: The Athlone Press, 1975), abbreviated K-D. Quotations from the C text of the poem are from George Russell and George Kane, eds., Piers Plowman, the C version: Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, Do-Well, Do-Better, and Do-Best, by William Langland (London: The Athlone Press, 1997).
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Steven Justice, “Langlandian Reading Circles and the Civil Service in London and Dublin, 1380–1427,” New Medieval Literatures 1 (1997): 72–73. 11. Middleton, “Kynde Name,” 51.
George Kane, “Piers Plowman”: The Evidence for Authorship (London: The Athlone Press, 1965), 69–70. The B text manuscripts that somehow identify this line are listed in C. David Benson and Lynne S. Blanchfield, The Manuscripts of “Piers Plowman”: The B-Version (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1997), 11. 13. This manuscript is described by K-D on page 14. Kane cites the omission of
Ranulf Higden, Polychronicon Ranulphi Higden Monachi Cestrensis Together with the English Translations of John Trevisa and of an Unknown Writer of the Fifteenth Century, ed. Churchill Babington and Joseph Rawson Lumby, 9 vols., Rolls Series 41 (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1865–1886), 1:ix–x n. 2, 1:xlvii, 1:liii.
John Bale, Illustrium maioris Britannia scriptorum. . .summarium (Wesel: Theodoricum Plataenum, 1548). There were two Wesel editions of the Summariaum, one of which bears the imprint “Ipswich”; see Robert Steele, “Notes on English Books Printed Abroad, 1525–48,” Transactions of the Bibliographical Society 11 (1909–1911): 235.
May McKisack, Medieval History in the Tudor Age (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1971), 14.
John Bale, Scriptorvm Illustriu[m] maioris Brytanniae quam nunc Angliam & Scotiam uocant Catalogus.. .(Basel: Ioannem Oporinum, 1557).
John Bale, Scriptorvm illustrium maioris Brytanniae posterior pars, quinque continens centvrias vltimas, qvas avthor Ioannes Baleus Sudouolgius, Anglus, ex Lelando antiquario, alijsque probis authoribus, non paruo labore collegi.. .(Basel: Ioannis Opporinus: 1559). On Bale’s successive revisions and expansions to his bio-bibliography, see McKisack, 14–15.
John Bale, The laboryouse Journey & serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes Antiquitees, geuen of hym as a newe yeares gyfte to kynge henry the viii. in the .xxxvii. yeare of his Reygne, with declaracyons, enlarged: by Johan Bale (London: n. p., 1549).
For example, Jack Upland is attributed to Chaucer by John Foxe in the 1570 edition of the Acts and Monuments. Bale’s notebook comments that “Hoc opus a quibusdam Galfrido Chaucero, sed sinistre tribuitur.” [This work is attributed by certain persons to Geoffrey Chaucer, but wrongly.] Bale’s autograph notebook was edited by Reginald Lane Poole as Anecdota Oxoniensia. Index Britanniae Scriptorum, quos ex variis bibliothecis non parvo labore collegit Ioannes Baleus, cum aliis: John Bale’s Index of British and Other Writers (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1902); the ascription of Jack Upland to Wyclif rather than Chaucer is on page 274. Early modern editions of Jack Upland and theories of its authorship are discussed in P. L. Heyworth, ed., Jack Upland, Friar Daw’s Reply, and Upland’s Rejoinder (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 5–6; Heyworth notes also that the edition by John Day cited in Bale’s notebook does not survive.
The poet’s first name remains “Robert” in published biographies for well over a century. In the eighteenth century, Thomas Tyrwhitt argued that the name of the poet, not just that of the dreamer, was Will; Tyrwhitt, The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, To Which Are Added an Essay on His Language and Versification; an Introductory Discourse; and Notes, 4:74–75 n. 57. Tyrwhitt’s inception of the modern tradition of naming the poet as “William Langland” is discussed by Charlotte Brewer, Editing “Piers Plowman”: The Evolution of the Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 32–34.
R. B. Haselden and H. C. Schulz, “Note on the Inscription in HM 128,” Huntington Library Bulletin 8 (1935): 26–27. 46. Benson and Blanchfield, 85.
Barbara Johnson quotes the Fuller biography and discusses Fuller’s assertion that Langland “may by Prolepsis be termed a Protestant,” but without mentioning its similarity to Bale’s biography; Johnson, Reading “Piers Plowman” and “The Pilgrim’s Progress”: Reception and the Protestant Reader (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992), 146.
On the organization of the “centuries” in Bale’s Summarium and Catalogus, see Leslie P. Fairfield, John Bale: Mythmaker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1976), 99–100.
All three editions have the same publication date, and, because the second and third share a title, their STC numbers and traditional sigla differentiate them. Robert Crowley, ed., The Vision of Pierce Plowman, now fyrste imprynted.. .(London: Robert Crowley, 1550), STC 19906, Cr1. Robert Crowley, ed., The Vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde tyme imprinted by Roberte Crowlye. . .Whereunto are added certaine notes and cotations in the mergyne, geuyng light to the Reader.. .(London: Robert Crowley, 1550), STC 19907, Cr2. Robert Crowley, ed., The Vision of Pierce Plowman, nowe the seconde tyme imprinted by Roberte Crowlye. . .Whereunto are added certaine notes and cotations in the mergyne, geuyng light to the Reader.. .(London: Robert Crowley, 1550), STC 19907a, Cr3. In subsequent citations, I use the sigla to identify particular editions.
Kane and Donaldson believe that Crowley’s second and third editions (Cr2 and Cr3) include readings from one or two more B text manuscripts, also no longer extant. On “Cr,” the manuscript on which Crowley based his text, see K-D, 6–7. The survival of the poem in at least two distinct versions (now called the B text and the C text) was first hypothesized in the eighteenth century by Thomas Hearne and was first claimed in print by Joseph Ritson in his Bibliographia Poetica of 1802; the theory that there are three distinct versions canonized in Piers Plowman scholarship by Skeat’s editions in the late nineteenth century. On Hearne and Ritson see Brewer, 20–22 and 33–36; see also Vincent DiMarco, “Eighteenth-Century Suspicions regarding the Authorship of Piers Plowman,” Anglia 100 (1982): 124–129. On Skeat, see Brewer, 91–112.
A bibliography of works written by and printed by Crowley appears as an appendix to John N. King, English Reformation Literature: The Tudor Origins of the Protestant Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 473–477.
Thomas Prendergast argues from a study of Bale’s notebook that Crowley saw the notebook in an intermediate stage, before the addition of some of Bale’s notes on Piers Plowman. Prendergast, “The Work of Robert Langland,” in Renaissance Retrospections: Tudor Views of the Middle Ages, ed. Sarah A. Kelen (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, forthcoming).
On the political ramifications of the Chaucer biography in Speght’s Works, see my “Climbing Up the Family Tree: Chaucer’s Tudor Progeny,” Journalof the Early Book Society 6 (2003): 109–123. By the turn of the seventeenth century, readers did seem to have an interest in authorial biography. One post-1598 reader’s attempt to synthesize a brief biography of Chaucer from available sources is discussed in R. F. Yeager, “British Library Additional MS 5141: An Unnoticed Chaucer Vita,” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 14 (1984): 261–281.
In 1561, Owen Rogers reprinted Crowley’s edition, appending Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede to the text. This edition does not reprint Crowley’s biography for the poet, although it preserves Crowley’s passus summaries, placing them at the heads of their respective passus rather than printing them all together as a preface. Owen Rogers, ed. The Vision of Pierce Plowman, newly imprinted after the authours olde copy. . .Wherevnto is annexed the Crede of Pierce Plowman, neuer imprinted with the booke before [by Robert Langland] (London: Owen Rogers, 1561).
Under the term “second edition,” I include both Cr2 and Cr3. Although these are technically different editions, their differences are minimal and not relevant to the points I make in this section. Both Cr2 and Cr3 claim on their title pages to be “nowe the seconde tyme imprinted.” Crowley did not, then, market them as distinct editions from one another, merely as different from his first edition, Cr1. My comparison between Crowley’s first and second editions is indebted to the careful analysis of their differences by R. Carter Hailey, “ ‘Geuyng light to the reader’: Robert Crowley’s Editions of Piers Plowman (1550),” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 94 (2001): 483–502.
John Bowers, “Piers Plowman and the Police: Notes toward a History of the Wycliffite Langland,” YLS 6 (1992): 41. 89. Crowley, Cr2, fol. *iiv.
Sharon L. Jansen, “Politics, Protest, and a New Piers Plowman Fragment: The Voice of the Past in Tudor England,” Review of English Studies n.s. 40, no. 157 (1989): 93–99. 118. Jansen, 94–95.
John Stow, The Chronicles of England, from Brute vnto this Present Yeare 1580 (London: R. Newberie [1580]), 387.
[George Puttenham]. The Arte of English Poesie, Contriued into three Bookes.. .(London: Richard Field, 1589), 48.
In the mid-twentieth century, the multiple author theory was so dominant that it could comfortably be transmitted as near orthodoxy to introductory students. In his overview of Piers Plowman in The College Survey of English Literature, B. J. Whiting writes that the single-author theory “has been vigorously attacked, and many valid objections to it having [sic] been pointed out, so that today many scholars hold that there was a separate author for each of the three versions.” B. J. Whiting, et al. eds, The College Survey of English Literature, 2 vols. (Harcourt Brace and Company, New York, 1942), 1:163. The multiple author theory was all but eliminated in the field by Kane’s Evidence.
Joseph Ritson, Observations on the First Three Volumes of the History of English Poetry, a Familiar Letter to the Author (London: J. Stockdale and R. Faulder, 1782), 12. Thomas Warton, History of English Poetry from the Close of the Eleventh to the Commencement of the Eighteenth Century, 3 vols. (London: J. Dodsley, 1774–1781).
Joseph Ritson, Bibliographia Poetica: A Catalogue of Engleish [sic] Poets, of the Twelfth, Thirteenth, Fourteenth, Fifteenth, and Sixteenth Centuries (London: G. and W. Nicol, 1802), 26–31. On Tyrwhitt’s theory that the poet may have been William, rather than Robert, Langland, see also note 43 above.
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© 2007 Sarah A. Kelen
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Kelen, S.A. (2007). The Birth of Langland. In: Langland’s Early Modern Identities. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230608764_2
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