{"product_id":"the-work-of-reform-literature-and-political-ecology-from-langland-to-spenser-paperback","title":"The Work of Reform: Literature and Political Ecology from Langland to Spenser - Paperback","description":"\u003cdiv\u003e\u003cp style=\"text-align: right;\"\u003e\u003ca href=\"https:\/\/reportcopyrightinfringement.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\"\u003e\u003cb\u003eReport copyright infringement\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/a\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003c\/div\u003e\u003cp\u003eby \u003cb\u003eWilliam Rhodes\u003c\/b\u003e (Author)\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Work of Reform\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e interweaves literary, economic, and environmental history to trace the influence that William Langland's harsh vision of enforced agrarian labor in \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003ci\u003ePiers Plowman\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003e had on later medieval and early modern thinking about land and improvement in Britain and Ireland, culminating with Edmund Spenser's colonial writing.\u003c\/b\u003e William Rhodes brings together a rich poetic archive with agrarian husbandry manuals, prose polemics, and imperial tracts to connect conflicts over land and labor on the English manor to those of Tudor Ireland, offering a new eco-Marxist literary history of ecological transformation across the medieval-modern divide. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eIn the aftermath of the Black Death, the depopulation of the countryside, and the beginnings of the Enclosure Movement, English poets imagined enforced labor as a panacea for social unrest precipitated by environmental catastrophe. Arguing that \u003ci\u003ePiers Plowman\u003c\/i\u003e established how poetry could envision religious and economic transformation based on agrarian production, \u003ci\u003eThe Work of Reform\u003c\/i\u003e reveals that the \u003ci\u003ePiers Plowman\u003c\/i\u003e tradition's valorization of agrarian toil was open to appropriation by later writers developing totalizing, top-down colonialist projects.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003ch3\u003eAuthor Biography\u003c\/h3\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eWilliam Rhodes is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Iowa.\u003c\/p\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eNumber of Pages:\u003c\/strong\u003e 246\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003eDimensions:\u003c\/strong\u003e 0.56 x 9 x 6 IN\u003c\/div\u003e\n            \u003cdiv\u003e\n\u003cstrong\u003ePublication Date:\u003c\/strong\u003e September 15, 2025\u003c\/div\u003e\n            ","brand":"BooksCloud","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":45519023145062,"sku":"9781501783258","price":72.43,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0599\/7255\/0758\/files\/OYuq5P-een9781501783258.webp?v=1776423023","url":"https:\/\/infinitylightwa.com\/products\/the-work-of-reform-literature-and-political-ecology-from-langland-to-spenser-paperback","provider":"Infinity Light","version":"1.0","type":"link"}