The Professional: Thomas Hoccleve

Description: Assesses Hoccleve's use of an "enfeebled persona" as a means to compete seriously with the "tasteful silences" of Chaucer and the "guilty fulminations" of Langland on the topic of vernacular poetic identity. Compares Hoccleve's "Male Regle" with PardPT and with the Seven Deadly Sins section of the B-text of "Piers Plowman," treating them as variations of an exemplum against sin, situated in a food-and-drink setting. Whereas Langland struggles to represent poetic personhood directly, Chaucer uses the ironic device of an unreliable narrator. Hoccleve, "by dint of his chronically complaining persona," focuses attention on the poet as the "logical spokesperson for the disenchanted world."

Chaucer Subjects: Pardoner and His Tale; Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.