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We are delighted to invite you to the next Hoccleve at Home event, featuring Charlotte Ross of Oxford University:

Charlotte Ross (Oxford University) 

“‘Unto yow compyle I this sentence’: the Paratexts of The Regiment of Princes“

Monday, November 18 at 1:30pm Central (2:30pm Eastern, 7:30pm UK & Ireland, 4:30am KST/JST)

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

Mark your calendars for two upcoming Hoccleve at Home events:

Jonathan Hsy (George Washington University) 

“Hoccleve’s Ethiopians: Black Faces, Disability, Metaphor”

Friday, October 25 at 1pm Central (2pm Eastern, 7pm UK & Ireland)

This paper explores Hoccleve’s preoccupation with the human face and its implications for theorizing race and disability. The first section traces Hoccleve’s considerations of the human face—as a somatic feature, and as a metaphor—within a medieval English literary context, putting his historical reflections on embodied difference into conversation with critical disability studies. The second section turns to race—specifically, medieval constructions of blackness—to unmask the unmarked status of whiteness in Hoccleve’s work. The final section integrates race and disability, posing new questions for Hoccleve and Middle English studies. This discussion incorporates concepts of disability as “narrative prosthesis” in literary criticism, as well as studies of metaphor as a historical race-making process, and it ends by suggesting future intersectional and global approaches to Hoccleve’s poetics.

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

And please save the date for our next event! We are delighted to host Charlotte Ross (Oxford) for a talk on Monday, November 18. Details forthcoming.

We are very sorry to report that our dear friend and colleague Dr. Jenni Nuttall has passed away. Jenni has been ill for some months, and she passed away at the end of last week.

Our thoughts go out to her husband Jon and daughter Molly. Her death is a source of great sadness and shock to all of us.

Jenni was a much respected scholar, teacher and member of the English Faculty and Exeter College communities at Oxford. Their reflections attest to her importance as a researcher, teacher, and public-facing scholar. Jenni was a longtime and tireless supporter of the work of the Hoccleve Society, most recently in co-organizing the inaugural society conference in 2018 and co-editing the volume that proceeded from the conference (both with David Watt). Several of the modern English translations available on the Hoccleve Society website are her work, which she made freely available for Hoccleve scholars, and she was among the first to speak for our “Hoccleve at Home” online seminars and helped us successfully launch the series.

We are deeply saddened by the news and will miss her a great deal.

Someone knocked very hard at my chamber door
And shouted loudly, ‘Hey, Hoccleve! Are you here?
Open your door! I think it’s been a really long time
Since I saw you last. Listen, my friend, for God’s sake,
Come out, for I haven’t seen you this last three months
As far as I know,’ and so I came out to see him…

Dr. Jenni Nuttall continues her translation of Hoccleve’s Series into modern English with a verse translation of its second constituent part, the “Dialogue,” now freely available here. You can view other open-access texts and translations on the Texts page of this website.

If you use these resources in your teaching or research, we’d love to hear about it! You can contact the IHS at hocclevesociety@gmail.com or directly reach out to our organizers.

The Hoccleve Society is excited to announce four talks this spring by Hoccleve scholars from around the globe:

• Jan 25, 2021 – 1pm Eastern, 7pm GMT Misty Schieberle (University of Kansas), “‘What stiketh by?’: The Letter of Cupid and The Harley 219 Glossary”
• Feb 22, 2021 – 1pm Eastern, 7pm GMT Sebastian Sobecki (Groningen), “Life Imitates Art: MS Harley 219, The Gesta Romanorum, and Hoccleve’s Poetics of Autobiography”
• March 22, 2021 – 1pm Eastern, 6pm GMT Jane Griffiths (Oxford), “‘Whi stant this word heer?’ Glossing and Reading in Hoccleve’s ‘Remonstrance to Oldcastle'”
• May 3, 2021 – Rebecca Clark (Dartmouth), title TBA
• June 7, 2021 – Daniel Wakelin (Oxford), “Hoccleve and Ruling”

If you would like to join us, please contact us at hocclevesociety@gmail.com to receive a meeting link. We will add you to a dedicated mailing list for future announcements and seminar materials.

If you’re interested in presenting, we continue to invite brief proposals (~500 words) for topics on Hoccleve and any aspect of his works. In the proposal, please provide an overview of your topic and a description of your planned format of presentation. As a general guideline, we suggest having a presentation of about 15 to 20 minutes in length to allow for a stronger focus and ample discussion. Seminars meet for about an hour. Please send proposals to hocclevesociety@gmail.com with “Hoccleve at Home” in the subject line.

Mark your calendars for the following upcoming Hoccleve at Home sessions:

• Oct 5, 2020 – Nicholas Myklebust (Regis University), “Hoccleve’s Metrical Game, or The Discreet Charm of the Bureaucrat”
• Nov 2, 2020 – Liza Strakhov (Marquette University), “Making a Man out of Hoccleve”
• Jan 25, 2021 – Misty Schieberle (University of Kansas), “‘What stiketh by?’: The Letter of Cupid and The Harley 219 Glossary”
• Feb 22, 2021 – Sebastian Sobecki (Groningen), “Life Imitates Art: MS Harley 219, The Gesta Romanorum, and Hoccleve’s Poetics of Autobiography”
• March 22, 2021 – Jane Griffiths (Oxford), title TBA
• May 3, 2021 – Rebecca Clark (Dartmouth), title TBA
• June 7, 2021 – Daniel Wakelin (Oxford), “Hoccleve and Ruling”

If you would like to join us, please contact us at hocclevesociety@gmail.com to receive a meeting link. We will add you to a dedicated mailing list for future announcements and seminar materials.

If you’re interested in presenting, we continue to invite brief proposals (~500 words) for topics on Hoccleve and any aspect of his works. In the proposal, please provide an overview of your topic and a description of your planned format of presentation. As a general guideline, we suggest having a presentation of about 15 to 20 minutes in length to allow for a stronger focus and ample discussion. Seminars meet for about an hour. Please send proposals to hocclevesociety@gmail.com with “Hoccleve at Home” in the subject line.

Our next “Hoccleve at Home” event is scheduled for Wednesday, August 12, at 2pm Eastern / 7pm UK and Ireland time, when David Watt (University of Manitoba) will present “You’re So Vain, You Probably Think This Psalm is About You: Awkwardness in Thomas Hoccleve’s Series.” If you would like to join us, please email us at hocclevesociety@gmail.com to receive a meeting link. We will add you to a dedicated mailing list for future announcements and seminar materials.

Looking forward, mark your calendars for Monday, October 5, when Nicholas Myklebust (Regis University) will present “Hoccleve’s Metrical Game, or The Discreet Charm of the Bureaucrat.”

If you’re interested in presenting, we continue to invite brief proposals (~500 words) for topics on Hoccleve and any aspect of his works. In the proposal, please provide an overview of your topic and a description of your planned format of presentation. As a general guideline, we suggest having a presentation of about 15 to 20 minutes in length to allow for a stronger focus and ample discussion. Seminars meet for about an hour. Please send proposals to hocclevesociety@gmail.com with “Hoccleve at Home” in the subject line.

The International Hoccleve Society has begun to assemble a library of pedagogical essays and open-access teaching materials to help teachers and students bring Hoccleve’s poetry into the classroom.

Our first contribution comes from Dr. Brendan O’Connell, Assistant Professor of English at Trinity College Dublin. Dr. O’Connell reflects on the successes and challenges of teaching “My Complaint” in spring 2020:

The closure of my university (Trinity College Dublin) due to the Coronavirus pandemic presented a different set of challenges: how to teach the ‘Complaint’ remotely, when neither I nor my students had access to the usual resources. While my experience of online teaching during the closure has been challenging, teaching this text was extremely positive and will shape the way I teach it in the future.

Read on here. And if you have materials to contribute, please reach out!

Jenni Nuttall has made two more translations available for students, teachers, and all other lovers of Hoccleve:

• The first is an excerpt from Hoccleve’s blockbuster, The Regiment of Princes, with valuable advice for weathering anxiety-producing times like our own.
• The second is Hoccleve’s Male Regle in its entirety, a lament of the poet’s unruly lifestyle and a request to remedy his “empty wallet and terrible hardships.”

Other translations and resources can be consulted on the Texts page. We invite further contributions!

The International Hoccleve Society is pleased to announce a growing library of Modern English translations of Hoccleve’s poetry, including Dr. Jenni Nuttall’s translation of Hoccleve’s “Complaint” and Emily Price’s translation of Hoccleve’s Ballades to Henry Somer.

Other translations and resources for students and teachers are compiled on the Texts page of this website. The IHS welcomes further contributions!