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.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.

List of IllustrationsList of ContributorsAcknowledgmentsNote on QuotationsList of AbbreviationsIntroduction: Hoccleve Then and Now, Jenni Nuttall and David WattPart I: Form in Context1 Historicising Hoccleve's Metre, Nicholas Myklebust2 Speech Acts and Conversation in the Series, A. Arwen Taylor3 Hoccleve and the Logic of Incompleteness, R. D. Perry4 A 'troubly dreme drempt al in wakynge': Hoccleve's Nearly-Dream Poem, Laurie AtkinsonPart II: Reading Life5 Hoccleve's Series and the Unanticipated Woman Reader, Michelle Ripplinger6 Hoccleve, Swelling and Bursting, Spencer Strub7 'Ransakid' by Death: Body, Soul and Image in Hoccleve's 'Learn to Die', Stephanie TriggPart III: Writing Life8 Hoccleve's Formulary and the Matter of Everyday Life, Taylor Cowdery9 Hoccleve's Feet: The Kinaesthetic Imaginary in Hoccleve's Writings, Helen M. Hickey10 Curatorial Hoccleve: Spiritual and Codicological Illumination in the Regiment of Princes, Ruen-chuan Ma11 Reading Through: Major/Minor Hoccleve, Sebastian J. LangdellIndex