PROGRAM
WEDNESDAY
16th May 2007
7:00 - 9:00 pm WELCOME PARTY
At the home of Rita Copeland and David Wallace
1722 Delancey Street
Philadelphia, PA
THURSDAY
17th May 2007
ALL EVENTS ARE IN HOUSTON HALL
8:30am - 5:00 pm REGISTRATION (1st-floor lobby)
9:00am - 4:00 pm BOOK EXHIBIT (1st-floor lobby)
Genealogy
9:30 - 10:45 am PLENARY SPEAKER (Class of ’49 Auditorium)
Welcome: E. Ann Matter (Associate Dean of Arts & Letters, University of Pennsylvania)
Introduction: Larry Scanlon (Rutgers University)
Speaker: Wendy Scase (University of Birmingham)
“‘In Pierces scole, the plowman stoute’: Tradition and Piers Plowman”
10:45 - 11:00 am COFFEE BREAK (2nd-floor Lobby)
11:00 am – 12:15 pm PLENARY SESSION (Class of '49 Auditorium)
Presider/Respondent: Larry Scanlon (Rutgers University)
Speakers:
James Simpson (Harvard University)
“The Saved, the Damned, and the Flow of History: Eschatology vs. Genealogy”
Fiona Somerset (Duke University)
“Another Langland Sympathizer, or, The Piers Plowman Tradition Expands Again”
12:15 - 1:30 pm COMPLIMENTARY LUNCH (Hall of Flags, ground floor)
Sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Department of English
We invite you to bring your boxed lunch to Kelly Writers House (3805 Locust Walk), where
George Economou (Emeritus, University of Oklahoma) will be reading from his translation of the C text.
1:30 - 3:00 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS (A – C)
Alliterative Poetry’s Latin Backgrounds (Ben Franklin Room)
Presider: Rita Copeland (University of Pennsylvania)
Organizer: Ian Cornelius (University of Pennsylvania)
Speakers:
Traugott Lawler (Yale University), “Langland Translating”
Martin Camargo (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), “Medieval Rhetoric Delivers”
Ian Cornelius (University of Pennsylvania), “Alliterative Poetry and the Cursus”
Respondent: David Lawton (Washington University in St. Louis)
Social Roles and Reciprocity (Bishop White Room)
Presider: Matthew Giancarlo (Yale University)
Speakers:
Jim Knowles (Duke University), “‘Can thow serven?’: Forms of Service in Piers Plowman”
Kate Crassons (Lehigh University), “Reckless Sanctity: Piers Plowman and the Limits of Franciscanism”
Conrad van Dijk (University of W. Ontario), “Equity and the Rigor of the Law in Langland and Gower”
Worm’s Eye on the Manuscripts (Golkin Room)
Presider: Richard Godden (Washington University in St. Louis)
Speakers:
Noelle Phillips (University of British Columbia)
“Reading the Red Letters: Rubrication in Corpus Christi College MS 201”
Gene Lyman (Boston University)
“Scribal Grapholects: Allographic Substitutions and the Textual Transmission of Piers Plowman B”
Stephen Shepherd (Southern Methodist University)
“Langlandian Counter-Catechesis and the Images of Douce 104”
Respondent: Michael Calabrese (California State University, Los Angeles)
3:00 - 3:30 pm COFFEE BREAK (2nd-floor lobby)
3:30 - 5:00 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS (D-F)
Allegory I: Community (Golkin Room)
Presider: Nicolette Zeeman (King’s College, University of Cambridge)
Speakers:
Stella Singer (Cleveland State University)
“Langlandian Landscape: Pilgrimage and Place in The Vision of Piers Plowman”
Sandra Pierson Prior (Emeritus, Columbia University)
“The Dream of Parish Community at the End of Piers Plowman”
Katie L. Walter (King’s College, University of Cambridge)
“‘Whoso shrape my mawe?’: Envy and Barber-Surgery”
Vision and Visuality (Bishop White Room)
Presider: Curtis Roberts-Holt Jirsa (Cornell University)
Speakers:
William E. Rogers (Furman University)
“Seeing and Believing: Logical Inference and the Representation of Space in Piers Plowman”
Wan-Chuan Kao (The Graduate Center, CUNY)
“White Blindness: Mercy, Power, and the Visuality of Conversion in Passus XX”
Sarah Tolmie (University of Waterloo), “The ExistenZ of Piers Plowman”
Piers Plowman and Late-Medieval Religious Literature (Franklin Room)
Presider: Penn Sittya (Georgetown University)
Organizer: Michelle Karnes (University of Missouri-Columbia)
Speakers:
Shannon Gayk (University of Indiana-Bloomington)
“‘To tilie truthe’: Preaching and Plowing in Piers Plowman and ‘The Sermon of Dead Men’”
Jennifer Sisk (Yale University)
“‘Audivi archana verba que non licet homini loqui’: What has Paul’s rapture to do with Will?”
Michelle Karnes (University of Missouri-Columbia)
“Langland’s Ymaginatif and Meditations on the Life of Christ”
Respondent: Steven Justice (University of California, Berkeley)
5:00 - 6:15 pm RECEPTION (Houston Hall Bistro)
Sponsored by the University of Georgia Department of English
6:30 - 8:00 pm GRADUATE STUDENT DINNER (Grad Lounge, Bennett Hall, 3rd Floor)
Complimentary food and drinks
sponsored by the Medieval/Renaissance Seminar, University of Pennsylvania
FRIDAY
18th May 2007
MORNING EVENTS: HOUSTON HALL — AFTERNOON EVENTS: VAN PELT LIBRARY
8:30 - NOON REGISTRATION (1st-floor Lobby)
9:00 - NOON BOOK EXHIBIT (1st-floor Lobby)
Context
9:00 - 10:00 am PLENARY SPEAKER (Class of '49 Auditorium)
Introduction: Emily Steiner (University of Pennsylvania)
Speaker: D. Vance Smith (Princeton University), “Negative Langland”
10:00 - 10:30 am COFFEE BREAK (2nd-floor Lobby)
10:30 am - 12:15 pm PLENARY SESSION (Class of '49 Auditorium)
Moderator: Emily Steiner (University of Pennsylvania)
Speakers:
Christopher Cannon (Girton College, University of Cambridge), “Langland’s School”
Anne Middleton (University of California, Berkeley), “Langland’s Maxims”
Bruce Holsinger (University of Virginia), “Langland’s Camels”
12:15 - 1:30 pm COMPLIMENTARY BUFFET LUNCH (Hall of Flags, ground floor)
Sponsored by the Rutgers University Department of English
12:30 - 1:30 pm BUSINESS MEETING (Hall of Flags, balcony)
International Piers Plowman Society (open to all conference participants)
1:30 - 3:00 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS (G-I)
Manuscripts Seminar (Lea Library, Van Pelt Library, 6th floor)
Ralph Hanna III (University Professor of Palaeography and Fellow,
Keble College, University of Oxford)
Featuring medieval manuscripts in the collections of the University of
Pennsylvania. This seminar is presently filled.
Belief in Piers Plowman (Class of '55 Room, Van Pelt Library, 2nd floor)
Presider: Sarah McNamer (Georgetown University)
Organizer: A.V.C. Schmidt (Balliol College, University of Oxford)
Speakers:
A.V.C. Schmidt, Balliol College (University of Oxford)
“Feeling is believing: Faith and the Senses in Piers Plowman”
Kantik Ghosh (Trinity College, University of Oxford)
“‘Sib to the sevene arts?’: Langland and Scripture”
Britton Harwood (Miami University, Ohio), “Piers as Conversation”
Reformation Responses (Meyerson Conference Center, Van Pelt Library, 2nd floor)
Presider: Rosemary O’Neill (University of Pennsylvania)
Speakers:
Kathleen Tonry (University of Connecticut, Storrs)
“Before Reform: Piers Plowman at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Century”
Mike R. Jones (University of York)
“The Problem of Prophecy in the First Printed Editions of Piers Plowman”
Anthony W. Razzi (Merton College, University of Oxford)
“Robert Crowley & the Ploughman Tradition in the Early English Reformation”
3:00 - 3:30 pm COFFEE BREAK (Class of '55 Room, Van Pelt Library, 2nd Floor)
Textuality
All events in this rubric are sponsored by Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania
3:30 - 5:15 pm PLENARY SESSION (Rosenwald Gallery, Van Pelt Library, 6th Floor)
Welcome: Carton Rogers (Vice Provost and Director of Libraries, University of Pennsylvania)
Presider and Moderator: Lawrence Warner (University of Sydney)
Speakers:
David McKnight (Curator, Schoenberg Center For Electronic Text and Image)
Consuelo Dutschke (Curator of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts,
Columbia University; mananging director, Digital Scriptorium)
Lynn Ransom (Visiting Curator of Medieval Manuscripts, Free Library of Philadelphia)
Hoyt Duggan (Project Director, The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, University of Virginia)
Patricia Bart (Associate Editor, The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive, University of Virginia)
5:15 - 6:15 pm PLENARY SPEAKER (Rosenwald Gallery, Van Pelt Library, 6th Floor)
Introduction: Lawrence Warner (University of Sydney)
Speaker: Andrew Galloway (Cornell University)
“A South-West Wynd on Saterday at Even: Piers Plowman & the Bohun World”
6:15a - 7:15 pm RECEPTION (Rosenwald Gallery, Van Pelt Library, 6th Floor)
Sponsored by Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania
SATURDAY
19th May 2007
ALL EVENTS ARE IN HOUSTON HALL
8:30 am - NOON REGISTRATION (1st-floor Lobby)
9:00am - 4:00 pm BOOK EXHIBIT (1st-floor Lobby)
9:00 - 10:30 am CONCURRENT SESSIONS (J-L)
Langland’s Poetics I (Ben Franklin Room)
Presider: Elizabeth Robertson (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Organizers: Elizabeth Robertson (University of Colorado at Boulder) and
Ingrid Nelson (Harvard University)
Speakers:
C. David Benson (University of Connecticut), “‘Of poesie a note’: How Langland Thinks”
Ingrid Nelson (Harvard University)
“From Exemplarity to Heteroglossia: The Poetics of Charity and the Problem of
Authority in Piers Plowman”
Maura Nolan (University of California, Berkeley), “Words for Beauty in Piers Plowman”
Respondent: Christopher Cannon (Girton College, University of Cambridge)
Langland’s Heirs: The Plowman Figure in Early Protestant Prints
and Manuscripts (Golkin Room)
Presider: David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania)
Organizer: Kathy Cawsey (Wilfrid Laurier University)
Speakers:
Annemarie Thijms (Trinity College, Dublin)
“Did ‘The Bancket of Johan the Reve unto Piers Ploughman’ inherit from Piers Plowman”
Kathy Cawsey (Wilfrid Laurier University)
“The Medieval Plowman Figure in Tudor Protestant Pamphlets”
Katherine Little (Fordham University)
“Edmund Spenser’s Piers”
Manuscript Culture: Readings and Responses (Bishop White Room)
Presider: William Askins (Community College of Philadelphia)
Speakers:
Susanna Fein (Kent State University) “Audelay’s Marcolf and Solomon and the Langland Question”
Bryan P. Davis (Georgia Southwestern State University)
“Cleaning Up the Mess a Bit: Commercial London Manuscripts of Piers
Plowman during the Late Fourteenth and Early Fifteenth Centuries”
Míceál F. Vaughan (University of Washington)
“Could the Trinity College, Dublin Manuscript of Piers A Have Contained the ‘John But’ Passus?”
10:30 - 10:45 am COFFEE BREAK (2nd-floor Lobby)
10:45 am - 12:15 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS (M-O)
Langland’s Poetics II (Ben Franklin Room)
Presider: Stephanie A.V.G. Kamath (University of Massachusetts, Boston)
Speakers:
Larry Scanlon (Rutgers University), “Personification and Penance”
Curtis Gruenler (Hope College), “Making Riddles Out of Scripture:
The Poetics of Enigma in Langland’s Commentary on First Corinthians 13”
Julie Orlemanski (Harvard University)
“‘Verray ensamples manye’: Forms and Valences of the Example in Passus XV”
Respondent: Elizabeth Robertson (University of Colorado at Boulder)
Allegory II: Gender, Identity, Descent (Golkin Room)
Presider: John Ganim (University of California, Riverside)
Speakers:
Masha Raskolnikov (Cornell University), “The Four Daughters of God and the Trouble with Gender”
Louise M. Bishop (Clark Honors College, University of Oregon)
“Similitude and Difference: ‘Verray matrimonye’ and Affinity in Piers Plowman”
and The Reule of Cristen Religion”
Margaret Lamont (University of California, Los Angeles)
“Unraveling Genealogies: Piers Plowman and Royal Genealogical Rolls of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Centuries”
Kingship, Politics, and the Law (Bishop White Room)
Presider: Jamie Taylor (Bryn Mawr College)
Speakers:
Juan David Sierra (Cornell University), “Leaute’s Limits—The Performative Sovereign”
Sarah Wood (Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford)
“‘Ecce rex’: Piers Plowman B 19.1-212 and Its Contexts”
Ed Craun (Washington and Lee University), “Wyclif and the Gutting of Lewte”
12:15 - 1:30 pm COMPLIMENTARY LUNCH (Hall of Flags)
Sponsored by the History of Material Texts Seminar, University of Pennsylvania
1:30 - 3:00 pm CONCURRENT SESSIONS (P-R)
Learning to be Saved (Bishop White Room)
Presider: George Shuffelton (Carleton College)
Speakers:
John T. Sebastian (Loyola University)
“‘Lyuynge aftur lettrure’: Learning to be saved in Langland and Hilton”
Katharine Breen (Northwestern University), “To Rehabilitate a Thief:
Robert the Robber, Haukyn the Active Man and the Problem of Durative Belief”
Jessica Rosenfeld (Washington University in St. Louis)
“Love’s Knowledge and the Ethical Life”
Respondent: Anna Baldwin (Hills Rd Sixth Form College, Cambridge, UK)
Early Fifteenth Century (Ben Franklin Room)
Presider: Frank Grady (University of Missouri-St. Louis)
Speakers:
Ruth Nisse (University of Nebraska–Lincoln), “Mum’s Martyrs and Emperors:
Post-Crusade Authorship and the Piers Plowman Tradition”
Helen Barr (Lady Margaret Hall, University of Oxford)
“Piers Plowman and the Digby Poems in Oxford Bodleian MS Bodley 102:
Wayward Progeny or Holy Bedfellows?”
Robert J. Meyer-Lee (Goshen College)
“‘Loke in this Book’: John Audelay’s Langlandian Bibliobiography”
Allegory III: Kinship and Genealogy (Golkin Room)
Presider: Jon Hsy (University of Pennsylvania)
Speakers:
Sarah A. Kelen (Nebraska Wesleyan University), “Reading the Plowman Family”
Isabel Davis (Birkbeck College, University of London), “On the Sadness of Not Being a Bird:
Abraham and Genealogy in William Langland’s Piers Plowman”
Sister Mary Clemente Davlin (Dominican University)
“Genealogical Terms in Piers Plowman B”
3:00 - 3:30 pm COFFEE BREAK (2nd-floor lobby)
Belief
3:30 - 4:30 pm PLENARY SPEAKER (Class of '49 Auditorium)
Introduction: Andrew Cole (University of Georgia)
Speaker: Nicholas Watson (Harvard University)
“Langland and Perfectionism: Haukyn's Cloak and Patience’s Paternoster”
4:45 - 6:15pm PLENARY SESSION (Class of '49 Auditorium)
Moderator: Andrew Cole (University of Georgia)
Speakers:
Nicolette Zeeman (King’s College, University of Cambridge)
“Allegories of Belief: The Satirical Gesture”
Steven Justice (University of California, Berkeley)
“Belief as Opposed to What?”
6:15 - 7:00 pm RECEPTION (1st-floor Bistro)
Sponsored by the Medieval Studies Program, Princeton University
7:00 - 9:30 pm BANQUET (Hall of Flags)
Welcome: Emily Steiner and David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania)