Really the only difficult thing about Piers Plowman is finding a good translation that is readable and hasn’t lost the original context.

I recommend that anyone trying to read it, go out and find following version:

ISBN: 9780393960112

Title: Piers Plowman: An Alliterative Verse Translation

Author: William Langland

Translator: E. Talbot Donaldson

Edited & Annotated: Elizabeth D. Kirk & Judith H. Anderson

I spent a lot of time looking through options for reading Piers Plowman, and this version is highly readable, annotated extremely well, and doesn’t seem to mess up any of the context.

Sidenote: The translator also has a pretty good Beowulf Translation, which I have also picked up and started reading.

  • Negative_Gravitas@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    10 months ago

    By that time, Glutton had put down more than a gallon of ale, and his guts were beginning to rumble like a couple of greedy sows. Then, before you had time to say the Our Father, he had pissed a couple of quarts, and blown such a blast on the round horn of his rump, that all who heard it had to hold their noses, and wished to God he would plug it with a bunch of gorse!

    And for the middle English aficionados…

    Til Gloton hadde yglubbed a galon and a gille.        His guttes gonne to gothelen as two gredy sowes; He pissed a potel in a Paternoster-while, And blew his rounde ruwet at his ruggebones ende, That alle that herde that horn helde hir nose after And wisshed it hadde ben wexed with a wispe of firses!