Trying to Read Piers Plowman: A Proposal.

[Has escaped previous bibliographical notice.] Urges a “transliteration” of B.Prol.-B.7 that would regularize spelling, leave diction and syntax unaltered, and print the text with a minimum of gloss. Finds that the translations of Skeat and Goodridge fail to communicate WL’s vigor and coherence, and that the manner of presentation of scholarly editions and school texts needlessly clutters up the poem for the modern non-specialist reader. Offers a transliteration of Prol.517-68 and 5.107-30, 154-93 as epitomes of the poem’s thematic concerns and WL’s poetic habits.