Лучшие книги Уильяма Ленгленда

Знаменитая аллегорическая поэма позднего средневековья "Видение о Петре Пахаре" (1362) отразила настроение крестьянства в период восстаний 14 в. Поэма написана традиционным аллитерационным нерифмованным стихом. Перевод, вступительная статья и примечания академика Д. М. Петрушевского.

This is a new translation into contemporary English of one of the greatest poems of the English Middle Ages. Piers Plowman remains of enduring interest for its vivid picture of the whole life of medieval society, for its deeply imaginative religious vision, and for its passionate concern to see justice and truth prevail in our world.

A. V. C. Schmidt's translation of the B-text is provided with an Introduction and extensive Notes which place the work in its contemporary setting and offer a full interpretative commentary on the poem.

From the magnificent heritage of English poetry before Chaucer, this volume reprints the most powerful and delightful examples. The longest work in the collection is Piers Plowman, an allegory which combines scathing satire of the contemporary church with a passionate and tender account of the true spiritual life. Filled, like the Canterbury Tales, with the bustle of fourteenth-century England, it is populated by scores of richly drawn characters and peppered with pithy sayings. A more lyrical account of spirituality appears in Pearl. But perhaps the greatest and most magical masterpiece of Middle English verse is the strange tale of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, a virtuoso performance which tells a chivalric story of mystery and suspense in verse of dazzling sensuous beauty.

Перевод, вступительная статья и примечания Д. М. Петрушевского.

William Langland's «The Vision of Piers the Plowman» has been described as one of the most analytically challenging texts in Middle English textual criticism. Of the fifty plus surviving manuscripts, of which some are only fragments, from this 14th century allegorical narrative poem none of these seem to be in the author's own hand or can clearly be linked to each other. The current scholarship on the work suggests that ultimately there were three iterations of the poem, referred to as the A, B, and C texts, that were progressively written by a single author over a period of 20-25 years. The poem, which is part theological allegory, part social satire, concerns the narrator's intense quest for the true Christian life, from the perspective of medieval Catholicism. In this edition a verse rendition by Walter William Skeat of the first seven passuses, or cantos, is presented with significant introductory material.