Category Archives: Hoccleve at Home

Please join us on Monday, November 3, 2025 (1PM North America Central time) for the first “Hoccleve at Home” event of the 2025-26 academic year. Our speaker will be Alice Fulmer-Zelinka (UC-Santa Barbara), who will give a talk titled, “A Transfeminist Epistemology of Gender and Disability with Thomas Hoccleve, the Pilgrim.” Here is a summary of Alice’s talk:

In this online talk, I will be highlighting instances in Thomas Hoccleve’s poetry that intersect autographically with Geoffrey Chaucer’s confessional pilgrims — a subset of the Canterbury Tales pilgrims. Poems such as “Lepistre de Cupide”, “Dialogus” and “Item de Beata Virgine” both present feminine voices directly, which I believe form a transfeminist epistemology and exceptional subjectivities of disability and gender. I believe that the trans affect that Hoccleve achieves in his Series is not only analogous to Chaucer’s confessional pilgrims, but that the subjectivity of the confessional pilgrims are direct antecedents to his trans confessionals in his Series which are placed in Thomas’ (Hoccleve’s fictive persona) autography.

Please email hocclevesociety@gmail.com for the video link.

Mark your calendars for the second Hoccleve at Home event of 2024:

Daniel Davies (University of Houston)

“Thomas Hoccleve and the English War State”

Monday, April 15

1pm Central (2pm Eastern, 7pm GMT) on Zoom

The impact of Thomas Hoccleve’s work in the Privy Seal has long been recognized as shaping his poetry. But what of his labor supporting the English war state? As one of the many bureaucrats who facilitated war through labor that paid soldiers, secured ordinances, issued safe conducts, and instructed military commanders, among other things, war for Hoccleve was an everyday part of his work. I will locate Hoccleve’s career in the Privy Seal within the landscape of England’s late-medieval wars in France, Wales, and Scotland, before considering pathways between Hoccleve’s wartime labor and his poetry. 

If you’re not on our mailing list, contact hocclevesociety@gmail.com for the link.

It gives us great delight to announce the schedule of “Hoccleve at Home” events for the upcoming academic year. Please mark your calendars, and we are excited to have such an excellent lineup of speakers!

For announcements about video links and other information, please email hocclevesociety@gmail.com, and we can put you on the “Hoccleve at Home” mailing list. We also welcome proposals for future “Hoccleve at Home” events at the same address. We look forward to seeing you online soon!

Fall 2021

• October 11, 1 PM Central Time (North America): Nicholas Perkins (Oxford Univ.) and Ethan Knapp (Ohio State Univ.), in dialogue on the evolution of Hoccleve scholarship, on the 20th anniversary of their respective Hoccleve monographs, moderated by Sebastian Langdell

• November 1, 1 PM CT: Amy Appleford (Boston Univ.) and Christopher Baswell (Columbia Univ. and Barnard Coll.), in dialogue on Hoccleve and disability studies, moderated by Ruen-chuan Ma

• December 13, 1 PM CT: Laurie Atkinson (Durham Univ.), “Hoccleve’s Nearly-Dream Poem, The Regiment of Princes, 1-2016,” moderated by Ruen-chuan Ma

Spring 2022

• February 22, 1 PM CT: Philip Knox (Cambridge Univ.), “Debating the Romance of the Rose across the Channel: Thomas Hoccleve and Christine de Pizan,” moderated by Sebastian Langdell

• March 22, 1 PM CT: Sonja Drimmer (Univ. Massachusetts, Amherst), Jonathan Hsy (George Washington Univ.), Bridget Whearty (Binghamton Univ.-SUNY), a roundtable discussion in honor of the twentieth anniversary of the Burrow-Doyle facsimile, moderated by Sebastian Langdell

• May 24, 1 PM CT: Graduate student session featuring Clint Morrison (Ohio State) and Jake Hertz (Boston U)