Abstract

Thomas Hoccleve makes several changes to his source text in his early-fifteenth-century English verse translation of Dominican Henry Suso's fourteenth-century Latin Ars Moriendi. Most noteworthy is the terminology surrounding the personification of Death: in Suso this alternates between imago and similitudo while Hoccleve refers simply to 'th'ymage'. Hoccleve's translation uses more homely and imagistic terms in order to force the reader into a closer affective identification with the figure of the dying man. This textually-produced intimacy furthers the larger social-rehabilitative project of the Series. Rather than a crude translation of Suso, Hoccleve's text is a subtle, profound Middle English contribution to the Ars Moriendi genre.

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