In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Thomas Hoccleve, Religious Reform, Transnational Poetics, and the Invention of Chaucer by Sebastian J. Langdell
  • Luke Penkett
Sebastian J. Langdell, Thomas Hoccleve, Religious Reform, Transnational Poetics, and the Invention of Chaucer (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press 2018 240 pp., ill.

In recent decades Thomas Hoccleve has come out from behind John Lydgate’s shadow and enjoyed greater critical attention and Sebastian J. Langdell’s latest book rightly focuses on him “as an individual who cultivates, throughout his works, the role of poetic mediator…who uses his poetic works to engage with contemporary religious reform movements and religious debate” (1).

Langdell’s introduction to Hoccleve was as an undergraduate, reading medieval literature, notably that of Skelton, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, at Oxford. He is currently (2019) Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Vassar College in New York. He is a founding member of the International Hoccleve Society and has held lectureships at Somerville, St Edmund Hall, and Balliol. Parts of the chapters in this publication were given as papers at conferences and seminars at Kalamazoo; the New Chaucer Society in Portland, Oregon; Reykjavik; and Oxford. An earlier form of Chapter One, “What world is this? How vndirstande am I?,” was published in Medium Ævum (2009), and Chapter Three, “What shal I calle thee? What is thy name?,” was published in New Medieval Literatures (2016) in an earlier form.

Following the Introduction are five chapters and a conclusion. Langdell wisely begins by examining the role of the language of vice and virtue, and moralization in the poet’s Epistle of Cupid (1402) and Series (1419–1426?). He shows that both “vice and virtue” and moralizations run like threads—and very strong ones at that—throughout his output. The first chapter considers the role of moralization in the Series with particular emphasis on the ecclesial response to heresy in England and at the Council of Constance (1414–1418).

Langdell follows this with brilliant explorations of Hoccleve’s response to the language of vice and virtue in Christine de Pizan’s Épistre au dieu d’amours (1399) and the relevance of this early work to the political contexts of deposition, accession, and legitimation in his own Epistle of Cupid, in addition to pondering how poets in both England and France engage with the Hundred Years War. Formerly, studies on the War have neglected the role played by Hoccleve, but here he is rightly shown as mediator pursuing peace as “a Christian imperative” (52) between the two nations through his Regiment of Princes (1410) and poem “To Sir John Oldcastle” (a prominent Lollard).

In Chapter Three we come to the heart of Thomas Hoccleve in which Langdell demonstrates what might well be regarded as Hoccleve’s greatest contribution to the literary traditions not only in England but, arguably, also on the Continent—his exposition of Chaucer—in which he presents the earlier poet as a figure of moral authority.

“Father Chaucer” (69) is also the figure of consummate—and unequivocally Christian—wisdom in the penultimate chapter, an investigation into the personalities of the Regiment. We are also reminded here of Langland’s influence on the poem.

We turn in the fifth chapter to an examination of the part that the Eucharist plays in Hoccleve’s output, especially in terms of concealment or in the fight [End Page 230] against heresy. In addition to the Regiment and the Series, we reflect on the poet’s devotional poems to the Virgin and the Trinity. Here, again, Hoccleve is not reticent in his presentation of Chaucer but, rather, uses the figure of Chaucer to highlight the literary, political, and even sacramental aspects of the later poet’s oeuvre.

Thomas Hoccleve has an extensive Bibliography and an exemplary Index nominum. The book is enhanced by ten images, most well-known from a variety of manuscripts in the British Library, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, and the Bodleian.

Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies, published by Liverpool University Press, under the editorial guidance of Vincent Gillespie and Richard Dance, are to be warmly congratulated in the production of this fine study which will serve as a bench-mark, and a high one at that, for the study of Hoccleve...

pdf

Share