Perkins, Nicholas.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y. : D. S. Brewer, 2001.
Perkins examines the narrative strategies Hoccleve adopts--advisor, servant, court outsider, autobiographer, moralist, petitioner--as responses to the politically charged context of "Lancastrian poetry." This study identifies the political context in…
Argues that the autobiographical portion of Hoccleve's "Regement of Princes" and its "praise and portrait" of Chaucer indicate that the poem is part of a broader "program of kingly self-representation" undertaken by Henry, Prince of Wales, who…
Surveys the reception of Hoccleve's poetry and argues that its "autobiographical self-presentation" underlines its differences from Chaucer's influential precedent. Hoccleve also introduces innovative themes and topics: madness, alienation, and…
Nafde, Aditi.
Journal of the Early Book Society 16 (2013): 55-83.
Compares Chaucer's and Hoccleve's manuscripts in terms of authorial control, contrasting the "muddle of disparate exemplars" of CT with Hoccleve's detailed attention to format. Specifically contrasts Hoccleve's "mid-stanza paraph" in his autograph…
Krochalis, Jeanne E.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 234-45.
Hoccleve's request for a portrait (supplied in the Harley 4866 MS of "The Regement of Princes") is something new: the author's likenesses had heretofore been stylized. Hoccleve's lines (4992-5012) place Chaucer in a holy or ecclesiastical setting. …
Ripplinger, Michelle.
Jennifer Nuttall and David Watt, ed. Thomas Hoccleve: New Approaches (Cambridge: Brewer, 2022.), pp. 105-23.
Explores Hoccleve's uses of and attitudes toward Christine de Pizan and Chaucer, focusing on Ovidian notions of female readership and how in his"Series" Hoccleve positions Pizan to "speak back to Chaucer" and "asks us to reflect on the Chaucerian…
Lehr, John.
Medieval English Studies 05 (1997): 243-82.
Compares the multilingual conditions of late-medieval England with modern conditions in Korea, Kenya, and Quebec. Then argues that Hoccleve's poetic career resulted from Lancastrian encouragement of a national English language imitating Chaucer's…
Burrow, John.
Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone, eds. The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 35-49.
Although Hoccleve's poetry is in many ways "at a further remove than Chaucer from French formal models," some features of his verse suggest a "closer affinity," especially the holograph manuscripts that can be seen as single-author "collected poems."
Perry, R. D.
Jennifer Nuttall and David Watt, ed. Thomas Hoccleve: New Approaches (Cambridge: Brewer, 2022.), pp. 65-84.
Assesses the "formal organising principle" of Hoccleve's "Series" in light of that of CT (and LGW). Argues that CT is "not just incomplete, but incompleteable" (citing the additivity entailed in CYP), explaining it as Chaucer's response to the…
Burrow, J. A.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), pp. 54-61.
Hoccleve, a personal acquaintance of Chaucer, received personal instruction from Chaucer in the art of English poetry. Hoccleve remains firmly subordinated to his master poet of imaginary worlds, but his distinctive strength is his being "a poet of…
Batt, Catherine.
Catherine Batt, ed. Essays on Thomas Hoccleve ([Turnhout, Belgium]: Brepols, 1996), pp. 55-84.
Examines the "defense-of-women" section near the end of Hoccleve's "Regiment" (lines 5090-194) as a meditation on literary influence and the need for the poet to comment on political issues. The defense alludes to the Wife of Bath and to…
Ovitt, George,Jr.
Mark Amsler, ed. Creativity and the Imagination: Case Studies from the Classical Age to the Twentieth Century (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1987): pp. 34-58.
Written for "Lyte Lowys" (Chaucer's son), Astr is a concise, brilliant translation of Masha'allah's "De compositione et utilitate astrolabii." Chaucer best displays his comprehension in his definitions of the equinoctial. Although written for a…
Together, Chaucer's two references to the Alexandrian crusade in CT, along with his portrait of the Knight and depictions of Custance and the Sultaness in MLT, expose similarities between missionary work and crusading. The Knight's participation in…
Speaight, George.
New York: John de Graff, [1955].
A sweeping survey of puppets, puppeteering, puppet shows, and their cultural legacy in England. Surmises briefly (p. 52) that "popet" (Th 7.701) and "popelote" (MilT 1.3254) may evince knowledge of puppet performance in Chaucerian England, but also…
MacDonald, Paul S.
Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2003.
Includes a chapter entitled "Mind and Soul in English from Chaucer to Shakespeare" (pp. 245-78) that surveys the denotations and connotations of the words "soul" and "mind," with examples drawn a range of authors, including Chaucer.
Benoit-Dusausoy, Annick, and Guy Fontaine, ed. Trans. Michael Wooff.
New York and London : Routledge, 2000.
Comprehensive survey of European literatures, writers, genres, motifs, and themes, from Homer to contemporary figures and trends. J. Smith, "Chaucer (c.1340-c.1400)," pp. 142-46, describes Chaucer and his works, discussing him as a humanist and a man…
Goldberg, Catherine L.
WVUPP 44: 34-41, 1998, 1999.
In TC, the layering of sources, authors, characters, and language produces a text that "seeks consciously to exist in the present each time it is read." The complex acts of memory among the characters suggest that time is chaotic, yet a "kind of…
Douib, Mohamed Karim.
SLOAP International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture 7.2 (2021): 70-81.
Argues that "the discarded historical event" of the Peasants' Revolt "surfaces" in NPT "not to record the cracks and crevices in the dwindling feudal system, but to participate in the bestialization and grotesquing of the 1381 insurgents and the…
The form of GP is descended from the genre of the rhetorical catalogue of types, represented in simpler form by the lists of trees and birds in PF. In PF, the garden represents the world of timeless values and the catalogs the earth-bound realities;…
Explores the functions and nuances of the historical present verb tense, focusing on epic scenes in CT (especially KnT and MLT), TC, LGW, and Anel, and assessing how Chaucer's uses of the tense help with vividness, immediacy, and "visualization" of…
Akbari, Suzanne Conklin.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 368-85.
Considers Nicholas Trevet's Anglo-Norman chronicle and discusses "the ways in which Trevet's larger vision of history is reflected in Chaucer's writing." Catalogues the various models for history available to and used by Chaucer, including Geoffrey…
Tambling, Jeremy.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
In a chapter entitled "Medieval and Early Modern Devils: Names and Images" (pp. 45–74), assesses the devil-dressed-in-green of FrT and its associations with the fairies in WBT; also comments on the characters in PardT and CYT "who are already…
Semenza, Gregory M. Colón.
Chaucer Review 38: 66-82, 2003.
Members of the aristocracy and the middle class engaged in wrestling. Thus, Chaucer's reference to the Miller as a wrestler cannot be dismissed as a reference to the lower class.
