This alliterative poem consists of four versions and among them The B-Text is considered to be the most excellent in that it derives from both the Z and A versions and closely succeeds to the C version. Moreover, the B-Text has been determined to be the best version in view of structure and development, and use of Latin quotations and various allegories. It's why I have selected the B version as the basis for the present concordance. This concordance is edited from A. V. C. Schmidt's William Langland: The Vision of Piers Plowman: The B-Text (J. M. Dent, 1995), which Schmidt uses as its base manuscript MS B.15.17. from Trinity College, Cambridge. The concordance contains an appendix which shows a list of differences between the base MS and Schmidt's edition and enables us to reproduce the real vocabulary and spellings of the base manuscript. Completion of the concordance makes it possible to enumerate all vocabulary in The Vision of Piers Plowman: The B-Text, which is the most representative alliterative poem in the late Middle English period, and to elucidate the allegorical world depicted in this work. To each headword are added parts of speech, definitions of words, and etymology. Reference to The Oxford English Dictionary and Middle English Dictionary is useful for linguistic research. We will clarify the religious background of Langland through the Latin concordance which refers to the Vulgate and other Latin citations. Concordance of alliterative words and frequency lists of alliterative structures exhibit the chief characteristics of this poem, and make it possible to compare with the alliteration in Beowulf. This concordance is quite useful to scholars of Medieval English Literature, and those of the history of the English language, social history of Medieval England, and Christian literature. |