A collaborative, open-access project presenting the rich textual tradition of Piers Plowman.
Begun in 1991, the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive has been received by scholars of Middle English literature, textual criticism, and the digital humanities as a landmark project. The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (PPEA), a collaborative open-access digital project, presents the rich textual tradition of Piers Plowman, a fourteenth-century allegorical dream vision attributed to William Langland. Three distinct versions of the poem survive in more than fifty manuscripts, along with four early printed editions – making Piers Plowman arguably the most textually complex work in the English canon. The PPEA aims to produce a public archive of the Piers Plowman tradition in a form that will answer a variety of scholarly demands, including access to transcriptions and images, documentary texts, and critical editions.
Piers Plowman Electronic Archive home page.
Piers Plowman Electronic Archive critical edition showing apparatus.
The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive represents the richness and complexity of the textual tradition of William Langland’s Piers Plowman, a fourteenth-century allegorical dream vision. The Archive provides unprecedented access to manuscript copies of the poem and at the same time generates critical editions that come closer than ever to the earliest texts of the poem, otherwise lost to the modern world.
Manuscript copy of Piers Plowman: Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 201, fol. 1r.
Manuscript copy of Piers Plowman: Huntington Library, Hm 128, fol. 113r.
Manuscript copy of Piers Plowman: Cambridge University Library, MS Gg.4.31, fol. 1.
Early printed copy of Piers Plowman: Crowley (Cr1) title page.
Timothy Stinson: Timothy Stinson is Associate Professor of English North Carolina State University. He serves as co-director of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive and director of the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET). His research interests include Middle English poetry, codicology, history of the book, and digital humanities.
Jim Knowles: Jim Knowles is Associate Teaching Professor of English at NC State University. He is the managing editor of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive and executive secretary of the Society for Early English and Norse Electronic Texts (SEENET). His research interests include Middle English poetry and late medieval history and theology.
North Carolina State University
30 years
Medieval studies; Manuscript studies; textual criticism; digital humanities