B Archetype Print Release

The Society for Early English & Norse Electronic Texts is pleased to announce the launch of the Piers Plowman Electronic Archive Print Series. The inaugural volume in the series, Piers Plowman: The B-Version Archetype, edited by John A. Burrow and Thorlac Turville-Petre is available here. This edition, the first of its kind in Piers Plowman studies, aims to establish the archetypal text of the B version of the poem, the ancestor of all extant manuscripts. The editors argue that this can be determined with certainty in the majority of lines by examining the relationship between the best copies of the alpha and beta families of the B-version stemma. Past editors have attempted to reconstruct the authorial text by extensive emendation, but Burrow and Turville-Petre demonstrate that the archetype was not nearly as corrupt as previously maintained. In Piers Plowman: The B-Version Archetype, the editors have opened a new chapter in the study of the B-text tradition.

In honor of this new publication and publishing partnership, we are also launching the first-ever fundraising campaign for SEENET, the John Burrow Memorial Fund, and ask you to consider making a donation to support our non-profit publishing work. As you are probably aware, Professor Burow passed away in October 2017; the moving obituary by his friend and co-editor Thorlac Turville-Petre captures the breadth and depth of his long career. While he lived to see the publication of the electronic text of Bx, Professor Burrow had always wanted to see Bx in print, and thus we dedicate the volume to him.