The
Rock and the Plough
by
Stella Pates, BA(Lond)
John
Grandisson, William Langland and Piers Plowman: A Theory of Authorship
About the Book
This book lays the great
Middle English poem Piers Plowman alongside the copious writings
of John Grandisson, Bishop of Exeter (1327-1369), demonstrating
their astonishing similarities. Bishop Grandisson is well remembered
for the building of Exeter Cathedral's Nave and West Front and of
the Collegiate Church of Ottery St Mary. He was also a superb administrator,
a famous liturgist and a writer of genius, whose "Register
is in fact a wonderful prose comment on the saeva indignatio of
Piers Plowman". His lyricism and his vivid accounts of pointless
Parliaments, fake miracles, sorceresses, hunting Canons and unruly
schoolboys rival the poem itself: the two illuminate each other.
In a Foreword to the
book, the Very Reverend Keith Jones, Dean of Exeter, writes that
the "linking of the author of Piers Plowman with Bishop Grandisson
is intriguing and suggests new ways of thinking about a great churchman
and a passionate observer of the humanity around him".
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