An Electronic Edition of Piers Plowman in Cambridge University Library MS Gg.4.31

我们已经完成了皮尔斯·普洛曼的文本版本，因为它出现在16世纪的MS剑桥，大学图书馆，MS g.4.31。威廉·朗兰的长诗是14世纪的宗教和社会寓言，它立即卷入了当时的政治，150年后被农民起义的领导人引用，作为宗教改革的先驱，它引起了新的兴趣。我们现在编辑的文本的特别之处在于，它是这首诗的最新手稿，写于16世纪中期，当时正值宗教争论和争论的高潮。朗兰至少创作了三个版本的这首诗，但50多个手稿中没有一个可以被认为是权威的。因此，对于皮尔斯·普洛曼的学生来说，电子文本现在提供了前所未有的优势，因此皮尔斯·普洛曼电子档案馆的建立目标是创建一个多层次的、超文本链接的、完整文本传统的文本库，其中包含每个权威证人的彩色数字传真，并开发一个计算机生成的复杂文献传统文本档案的模型。文本附有法典、历史和语言注释；它们可以被搜索和操纵，并与其他版本的诗歌进行比较。电子版本满足了那些想要研究单个手稿的读者，以及那些想要最好的编辑重建的读者，这将在档案馆工作的后期阶段实现。与档案馆的其他版本一样，这个版本的MS g.4.31记录和注释了手稿的所有物理特征，包括擦除，标点，悬空和缩写，文本的边缘和行间添加或更正，抄写手或脚本的变化，以及当代和后来的注释。文本的介绍考察了手稿的特征和意义，包括它对皮尔斯·普洛曼文本的记录，以及它在一个宗教争议再起的时代所扮演的角色。它给出了技术描述以及整理，内容，笔迹，标点符号，装饰，出处和装订的材料。对语言和方言的全面分析是对中世纪和早期现代语言发展史的贡献。对后来的更正的原因进行了考虑，并提出他们的动机部分是希望清晰，部分是出于对拼写的关注。有人认为，可能已经设想了进一步的手稿副本或印刷版的生产。本版本和其他版本中所包含的信息将为文化和文学史学家提供一个永久有用的文本库，同时也为编辑、语言学家、古文字学家和法典学家今后对这首诗的所有研究奠定基础。

We have completed an edition of the text of Piers Plowman as it appears in the sixteenth-century MS Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.4.31. William Langland's long poem is a fourteenth-century religious and social allegory, which was immediately embroiled in the politics of its time and quoted by the leaders of the Peasants' Revolt 150 years later it stirred new interest as a precursor of the Reformation. The special interest of the text we have now edited is that it is the latest manuscript of the poem, written in the mid sixteenth century, at the height of religious controversy and argument. Langland composed at least three versions of his poem, but none of the 50-plus manuscripts can be taken as authoritative. To students of Piers Plowman, therefore, electronic texts now offer unprecedented advantages, and consequently The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive has been established with the goals of creating a multi-level, hypertextually linked, textbase of the complete textual tradition, with colour digital facsimiles of every authoritative witness, and of developing a model for computer generated archives of texts transmitted in complex documentary traditions. The texts are accompanied by codicological, historical and linguistic annotations; they can be searched and manipulated and compared with other versions of the poem. An electronic edition satisfies those readers who want to study an individual manuscript as well as those who want the best possible editorial reconstruction, which will come at a later stage in the work of the Archive. As with other editions for the Archive, this edition of MS Gg.4.31 records and annotates all the physical features of the manuscript, including erasures, subpunctions, suspensions and abbreviations, marginal and interlinear additions or corrections to the text, changes in scribal hand or script, as well as contemporary and later glosses. The Introduction to the text examines the character and significance of the manuscript, both its record of the text of Piers Plowman and its role in an age of renewed religious controversies. It gives a technical description as well as material on collation, contents, handwriting, punctuation, decoration, provenance and binding. Full analysis of language and dialect has been provided as a contribution to the history of medieval and early modern developments in the language. The reasons for the later corrections have been considered, and it is suggested that they are motivated in part by a desire for clarity and in part out of a concern for spelling. It is argued that the production of a further manuscript copy or perhaps a printed edition may have been envisaged. The information contained in this and other editions will provide a textbase permanently useful to cultural and literary historians, as well as the foundation for all future work on the poem by editors, linguists, palaeographers and codicologists.