A Progress Report on The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive

This article discusses the early history, current publications, and future directions of the The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (PPEA). It begins with account of the project’s origins in computer assisted analysis of Middle English alliterative meter in the mid-1980s and describes some of the technical challenges facing early digital editing projects. It then discusses the project’s current and forthcoming documentary editions of Piers Plowman manuscripts and its early work on the B archetype, concentrating on the challenges posed by this heterogeneous tradition. The first appendix describes a list of new manuscript sigils used by the PPEA to avoid problems caused by the traditional, ad hoc, system.The second appendix describes features of the new Elwood browser, which will be used for forthcoming volumes in the PPEA.