Rereading Hoccleve’s Series: The Limits of Language and Experience

One of the problems in Hoccleve’s “My Compleinte” and “A Dialoge,” the first two poems in the Series, is that every word he utters, even when he insists on his sanity, is taken as that of a madman. If his words always sound untrustworthy to the skeptical ears of others, does he have no choice but to keep silent? I shall explore this problem by analyzing “Ars Vtillissima Sciendi Mori,” the neglected text in the Series, pointing out that its stress on the idea of experience, which lies beyond language, is effectively opposed to the limits of language depicted in the first two poems. By inviting the echo of “My Compleinte” into “Ars,” and by linking the word sauoure in “Ars” to taaste in “My Compleinte” and “A Dialoge,” Hoccleve connects the treatments of language and experience throughout the compilation. It is in this light that the Series comes into view as a thematically integrated text.