Thomas Hoccleve: New Approaches

The Middle English poet Thomas Hoccleve, known particularly for his entertainingly biographical verse describing life as a Privy Seal clerk in early fifteenth-century Westminster, is now recognised as a key figure in the literature of later medieval England. This volume, the first collection of essays devoted to Hoccleve since 1996, both confirms his importance in shaping the English poetic tradition after Chaucer’s death and demonstrates the depth of ongoing critical interest in Hoccleve’s work in its own right. Chapters explore the idiosyncratic forms of his two principle works, The Regiment of Princes and Series, as well as Hoccleve’s distinctive imagery of moving feet, of swelling and bursting bodies, and of the actions of personified Death. Other essays consider the presence of the figure of the woman reader, the part played by the codex in posthumous literary sanctification, the links between Hoccleve’s formulary of model letters and documents and his own verse, and the mutually informing relations of Hoccleve’s minor poetry and major works. They are preceded by a substantial introduction, considering contemporary responses to Hoccleve in the light of current trends in literary criticism and surveying the reception of his works between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries.