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In his “Complaint,” Thomas Hoccleve claims that his memory returned to him on Alle Hallowmesse. In order to mark the occasion, the International Hoccleve Society invites you to join us in “Remembering Hoccleve” on 1 November 2014. We invite you to participate by posting short medieval passages and/or images on the following topics on Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr: healing, the benefits of being among people, complaints about money, complaints about one’s perception in the world, images that show medieval medical practice, images related to Alle Hallowmesse and the autumn saints days, etc. Alternatively, you can participate by “remembering Hoccleve” in some other way, perhaps by sending or posting a favourite passage from his work (up to 14 lines) and a short explanation of why you think it should be remembered. Please identify your posts and tweets with the hashtag #Hoccleve.

Image courtesy of luminarium.org. Detail from British Library MS Arundel 38 f. 37.

We will kick off the event with posts on our Twitter feed, Facebook account, and Tumblr page. So please follow us there and on our webpage! We hope you will join us by posting at least one item on 1 November under the hashtag #Hoccleve and liking or retweeting thematically pertinent items throughout the day under this hashtag. Please, of course, feel free to attach other hashtags (#memory, #medievalistproblems, #emotion, #MSilluminations, etc.) after #Hoccleve as they are relevant.

Hoccleve Less Studied

The International Hoccleve Society seeks to promote scholarly attention to the writings of Thomas Hoccleve, especially by providing a forum for reappraisals of and innovative approaches to his work. This year’s session turns its attention to the less-studied parts of Hoccleve’s oeuvre. The Society seeks to encourage scholars to challenge conventional notions of Hocclevian canonicity. In this session, we will work to destratify Hoccleve scholarship and create a polysystematic set of readings of Hoccleve’s lesser known works. In doing so we welcome presenters to use the “major texts” as points of departure while working to expand the boundaries of Hoccleve studies.

In our endeavor to disrupt the problematic differentia specifica of Hoccleve’s work at our Kalamazoo session, we seek to build upon the work of scholars who have begun this effort. For example, thoughtful criticism by Robyn Malo, Ethan Knapp, and Heather Hill-Vasquez, has persuasively demonstrated how Hoccleve’s ‘minor’ works, the “Letter to Cupid,” the “Address to Sir John Oldcastle” and the Marian Lyrics, are informed by many of the same literary traditions or discourses with which he engages in The Regiment of Princes. Others, such as Linne Mooney, Helen Hickey, and Ruth Nisse, have moved beyond the canonical understanding of Hoccleve as an autobiographical poet and thereby opened up all of his work to new interpretive frames of reference. The premise for this session is to continue conversations started by such scholars.

We seek papers that make an effort to de-familiarize Hoccleve studies by emphasizing Hoccleve’s texts that are not normally considered to have much weight in Hoccleve scholarship, and to explore the gravitational pull they might have to Medieval Studies and Fifteenth Century Studies as a whole. In particular, by looking beyond The Regiment of Princes, this session proposes a more robust and heterogeneous perspective on the Hocclevian literary corpus. We propose that participants consider not only under-represented texts, but also resonances within the texts themselves to each other and to both modern and medieval generic and scholarly discourses. Questions to consider might include: how might Hoccleve’s (over)use of the penitential genre affect its power to console? How might the Formulary expose genre indeterminacies by disseminating seemingly contradictory forms—the bureaucratic and the artistic—in the context of fifteenth-century poetry that exposes a fundamental instability of both genres? How might Hoccleve’s translations both undermine and reinforce ideas of masculine literary identity? By engaging in this carnivalesque celebration of textual expansion, we hope to turn Hoccleve’s lesser known works into their own competitive cooperation of divergent voices within this writer’s full literary corpus.

We especially welcome paper proposals that consider Hoccleve’s lesser known works in the context of theory, manuscript dissemination, textual history and/or media studies, modes of social engagement, and connections between themes, literary devices, language, and prosody.

Please send 250-word proposals to hocclevesociety@gmail.com by September 15, 2014.

On 19 May 2014, IHS conducted its annual general meeting to discuss Society business and plan for the coming year. The meeting was a teleconference conducted via Skype, and the minutes are available here in PDF format.

Please join us for our third sponsored session at Kalamazoo.

Hoccleve in Dialogue (Session 335)
Saturday May 10, 10:00am in Valley I, Ackley 104

Organizer and Presider: Amanda Walling, Univ. of Hartford

Presenters:
“Al in the glose folk laboure and swete”: Langlandian Doubt in the Regiment of Princes
–Spencer Strub, Univ. of California–Berkeley

Dialogic Collapse and Royal Presence: Inventio and the “Makyng” of a King in Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes
–Taylor Cowdery, Harvard Univ.

“By communynge is the beste assay”: Thomas Hoccleve and the Centrality of Dialogue as a Socioliterary Practice
–Travis Neel, Ohio State Univ.

“Of Mescreantz” in Lancastrian England: Hoccleve and Gower
–David Watt, Univ. of Manitoba

Session Description:
The International Hoccleve Society seeks to promote scholarly attention to the writings of Thomas Hoccleve, especially by providing a forum for reappraisals of and innovative approaches to his work. This year’s session seeks to re-imagine Hoccleve’s place in the literary landscape of medieval England by placing him in dialogue with authors other than Chaucer. Although no one has done more to place Hoccleve in Chaucer’s shadow than Hoccleve himself, such critics as Derek Pearsall, Ethan Knapp, and John Bowers have done much to complicate our understanding of Hoccleve’s relationship to Chaucer’s work. The premise for this session is that new understandings of both Hoccleve and his peers might be gained if we seek out other currents of influence and exchange.

In particular, by challenging the genealogical framework of influence that Hoccleve himself championed, this session proposes a more heterogeneous and promiscuous Hocclevian literary sphere. We propose that participants consider not only underacknowledged sources and influences on Hoccleve’s work, but also resonances with the work of later authors or with literary currents with which Hoccleve may not have had direct contact. Connections with authors outside the direct Chaucerian tradition are especially welcome: what would it mean to see Hoccleve as a Langlandian, rather than a Chaucerian, poet (for example, via his use of personification, his topicality, or his poetic persona)? How can we think in new ways about Hoccleve and continental traditions (including such authors as Christine de Pizan, Machaut, Deschamps, or Deguileville)? How might his work resonate with other genres, such as debate poetry, romance, or lyric? Where can we locate points of correspondence between Hoccleve and later authors, who may not acknowledge him as their own Father Hoccleve?

Contact the session organizer, Amanda Walling, with any questions or to inquire about how to meet up with International Hoccleve Society members while at Kalamazoo.

Hoccleve in Dialogue

The International Hoccleve Society seeks to promote scholarly attention to the writings of Thomas Hoccleve, especially by providing a forum for reappraisals of and innovative approaches to his work. This year’s session seeks to re-imagine Hoccleve’s place in the literary landscape of medieval England by placing him in dialogue with authors other than Chaucer. Although no one has done more to place Hoccleve in Chaucer’s shadow than Hoccleve himself, such critics as Derek Pearsall, Ethan Knapp, and John Bowers have done much to complicate our understanding of Hoccleve’s relationship to Chaucer’s work. The premise for this session is that new understandings of both Hoccleve and his peers might be gained if we seek out other currents of influence and exchange.

In particular, by challenging the genealogical framework of influence that Hoccleve himself championed, this session proposes a more heterogeneous and promiscuous Hocclevian literary sphere. We propose that participants consider not only underacknowledged sources and influences on Hoccleve’s work, but also resonances with the work of later authors or with literary currents with which Hoccleve may not have had direct contact. Connections with authors outside the direct Chaucerian tradition are especially welcome: what would it mean to see Hoccleve as a Langlandian, rather than a Chaucerian, poet (for example, via his use of personification, his topicality, or his poetic persona)? How can we think in new ways about Hoccleve and continental traditions (including such authors as Christine de Pizan, Machaut, Deschamps, or Deguileville)? How might his work resonate with other genres, such as debate poetry, romance, or lyric? Where can we locate points of correspondence between Hoccleve and later authors, who may not acknowledge him as their own Father Hoccleve?

We envision several papers that consider Hoccleve in relation to another poet, work, or literary tradition, possibly considering connections between themes, modes of social engagement, literary devices, language, prosody, or textual history.

Please send 250-word proposals to hocclevesociety@gmail.com by September 15, 2013.

Please join us for our second sponsored session at Kalamazoo

“Take Anothir Forme”: The Selection of Forms in Thomas Hoccleve’s Work

3:30pm, Thursday, May 9, 2013

Schneider 1345

Organizer and Presider: David Watt (Univ. of Manitoba)

Presenters:

A. C. Spearing, Univ. of Virginia — Hoccleve and the Form of the Prologue

Robin Wharton, Georgia Institute of Technology — Hoccleve’s Poetics of Heresy and Sovereignty in the Regiment of Princes

Amy Anderson, Univ. of Kentucky — “The Substaunce of My Memorie”: Memorial Forms in Thomas Hoccleve’s “My Compleinte” and “La Male Regle”

Helen Maree Hickey, Univ. of Melbourne — Hoccleve’s Formulary: Parchment Poetics, Literary Allusions

‘Take anothir Forme:’ The Selection of Forms in Thomas Hoccleve’s Work   

        The International Hoccleve Society is devoted to promoting scholarship on the late-medieval poet Thomas Hoccleve, provoking innovative research into his work, and providing a community for Hoccleve scholars. By sponsoring this session at the International Medieval Congress, we hope to provoke scholars to explore how recent critical interest in form and formalism might contribute to our understanding of Hoccleve’s work as a maker of poetry and books. At the same time, we hope to encourage scholars to consider how Hoccleve’s making of poetry and of books might contribute to our understanding of form in the early fifteenth century.

            As Christopher Cannon notes, “‘form’ is a slippery concept and this has long been true” (177). This session aims to take advantage of the slipperiness of form as a concept by inviting papers that define it broadly. We invite papers that explore literary, physical, and bureaucratic forms in all aspects of Hoccleve’s work—his poetic output as well as his work as a clerk of the Privy Seal. We anticipate that papers will explore the selection of literary forms in Hoccleve’s work, the selection of physical forms—formats—in which his work circulated and continues to circulate, or the selection of bureaucratic forms in Hoccleve’s formulary (London, British Library, MS Additional 24062). We also anticipate papers that will explore the relationships between these aspects of form.

            Papers in this session may also consider how well contemporary conceptions of form correspond with Hoccleve’s own use of the term. For the old man in the Regiment of Princes, the selection of forms has moral consequences. When he presses the narrator to follow only good advice, he warns that

If thow it weyve and take anothir forme,

Aftir thy childissh misreuled conceit,

Thow doost unto thyself harm and deceit. (RP 194-96)

The old man uses the word forme to denote a model to be copied, but the word weyve invites readers to consider its bureaucratic connotations as well. Hoccleve’s diction suggests that, in the bureaucratic and moral realms, the selection of form can determine the difference between “harm and deceit” and “reward and truth.” To what extent do these consequences apply to the selection of literary and physical forms in Hoccleve’s work and, more broadly, to our conception of form in the early fifteenth century?

Please send 250-word proposals to hocclevesociety@gmail.com by September 15, 2012.

Please join us for our inaugural sponsored session at Kalamazoo

Tradition and the Individual Hoccleve

3:30pm, Saturday, May 12, 2012

Fetzer 1005

Organizer and Presider: Sebastian J. Langdell (Oxford University)

Presenters:

Amanda Walling (University of Hartford) — To Know A Poem’s Heart: Fidelity and Tradition in the Letter of Cupid

Elisabeth Kempf (Freie Universität Berlin) — “That text I undirstonde thus alwey”: Hoccleve, Feminism and Metatextuality

Erica R. Machulak (University of Notre Dame) — Insomnia in Hoccleve’s Series

Cristina Pangilinan (Vanderbilt University) — Thomas Hoccleve’s Social Life

Session abstract:

In “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot writes, “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone…You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead.” Critics have long set Thomas Hoccleve among the dead, reading him in the light of Chaucer and — to a lesser extent — Gower. Hoccleve invites contrast and comparison with these predecessors by memorializing them in his Regiment of Princes. While we might follow Eliot by asking what the “individual Hoccleve” brings to what critics often call the Chaucerian tradition, we might also follow Eliot by asking how this English literary past is directed and altered by a Hocclevian present. For instance, how “Hocclevian” is the version of Chaucer we see depicted in the Regiment? Where does Hoccleve draw from his predecessors and where does he re-create them in his own image? Recent Hoccleve scholarship has illuminated the ways in which Hoccleve acts not as a passive recipient of literary and artistic models, but rather as an innovator and instigator: John Bowers has credited Hoccleve with creating the “first collected poems in English”; Derek Pearsall associates Hoccleve with the “invention” of English portraiture; Ethan Knapp finds in Hoccleve “the dramatic first stirrings of vernacular autobiography”; and Bernard O’Donoghue sees “the earliest and inchoate exponent of a mixed kind of writing that is found up to the early Elizabethans…drawing on conventional frameworks and apparently real experiences at the same time.” With this succession of “firsts,” a different picture of Hoccleve emerges: a Hoccleve who proves not only useful for his connection to “the dead,” but indeed capable of creating new possibilities for the composition and preservation of English poetry.

This session invites papers that explore the tension and interplay between “tradition and the individual Hoccleve”: What does the poet bring to the poetic tradition that he works to establish? How does Hoccleve “make it new”? How does the poet play the temporal against the timeless, the contemporary against the conventional? We invite speakers to draw on any of Hoccleve’s works when considering these questions and, equally, to consider Hoccleve’s various roles as scribe, poet, and Privy Seal clerk. We also invite speakers to consider how Hoccleve draws and distinguishes himself from other traditions, whether literary, cultural, artistic, or ecclesiastical. What of his connection to the French poetic tradition, for instance, and to poets like Pizan, Deschamps, and Machaut? What of the less well-charted waters of Hoccleve’s potential connections to Langland? What new literary and textual compounds catalyze, react, and materialize in the hands of an individual Hoccleve?