Eulogies and Usurpations: Hoccleve and Chaucer Revisited

Eulogies and Usurpations: Hoccleve and Chaucer Revisited Ethan Knapp Ohio State University The search for descent is not the erecting of foundations: on the contrary, it disturbs what was previously considered immobile; it fragments what was thought unified; it shows the heterogeneity of what was imagined consistent with itself. -Michel Foucault, "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History" Tm;, pechaps no ;J,ology so cenual), pp. 268-71; Alan Gaylord, "Portrait ofa Poer"; and M. C. Seymour, "Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve," Burlington Maga­ zine 124 (1982): 618-23. 263 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER To god pi sane make a moci'oun, How he pi seruaunt was, mayden marie, And lat his loue floure and fructifie. Al-pogh his lyfe be queynt, pe resemblaunce Of hym hap in me so fressh lyflynesse, pat, to putte ochir men in remembraunce Of his pers6ne, I haue heere his lyknesse Do make, to pis ende in sothfascnesse, pat pei pat haue of hym lest pought & mynde, By pis peynrure may ageyn hym fynde. The portrait of Chaucer that accompanies these verses in the Harley MS is one of the earliest we have, and is probably based on an exemplar shared with the famous Ellesmere portrait.24 It is also something of a landmark in the history of illumination for the simple reason that it claims to be an attempt to present a realistic, mimetic image ofChaucer. Lifelike portraiture, the attempt to model faces not on symbolic or ideal­ ized features but on realistic detail, was not a regular feature of manu­ script illumination in this period. Such portraiture tended to represent individuality by means not of particular physiognomy but rather through the presence of symbolic objects, clothing, or heraldic devices. For instance, in the illumination found in the Arundel MS showing Hoccleve presenting his book to Prince Henry, the faces of the two men are indistinguishable. The men are distinguished by their clothing, and by their relative position (and even physical size) within the frame.25 But this period also saw the beginnings ofmajor changes in such strate­ gies of representation. Jeanne Krochalis has singled out the memorial effigy as a likely prece­ dent for Hoccleve's innovative decision to provide a lifelike, and not 24 Pearsall, Life ofGeoffrey Chaucer, pp. 288-89. 25 This image is reproduced as the frontispiece ro Mitchell's Thomas Hocdeve. Krochalis ("Hoccleve's Chaucer Portrait," p. 237) maintains that the faces are indistinguishable, and from my own examination of the reproduction, I would agree. For a differing opin­ ion, see Gervase Matthew's detailed description of the presenration portrait, in which he asserts that it is intended as an individualized picture of the two men; The Court of Richard II (London: John Murray, 1968), pp. 203-4. For the relative backwardness of English illumination, especially with regard to early Dutch naturalism, see J. J. G. Al­ exander, "Painting and Manuscript Illumination for Royal Patrons in the Later Middle Ages," in V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds., English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Gerald Duckworth and Co., 1983), pp. 141-62. 264 HOCCLEVE AND CHAUCER REVISITED simply iconographically charged, image of Chaucer. This fact, and the fact that the two stanzas that directly follow the portrait and eulogy constitute an attack on Lollard doctrines denying the usefulness of im­ ages of the saints, lead her to suggest that in inserting a portrait of Chau­ cer,Hoccleve seems to be asserting a parallel between the meditation on the images of saints and meditation on the images of poets. 26 We can add to this claim the fact that the memorial passage occurs within a section of the Regement ofPrinces that lays outHoccleve's claim for the place of poets as necessary counselors to royalty, a section that is highly reminiscent of one ofHoccleve's sources, the Secreta secretorum. The myth­ ical origins of the Secreta were, of course, a series of letters written by Aristotle to his young pupil Alexander the Great while the latter was off on campaign in the East and so unavailable for firsthand edification. In the history of English vernacular poetry, Hoccleve's work is one of the first to assume a...