Hoccleve, Thomas | John V. Fleming (essay date 1971)
John V. Fleming (essay date 1971)
SOURCE: Fleming, John V. “Hoccleve's Letter of Cupid and the ‘Quarrel’ over the Roman de la Rose.” Medium Aevum 40, no. 1 (1971): 21-40.
[In this essay, Fleming examines the “Letter of Cupid,” Hoccleve's translation of Christine de Pisan's L'Epistre au Dieu d'Amours. Instead of seeing the work as a critique of de Pisan's defense of women, Fleming proposes that the “Letter of Cupid” obliquely attacks de Pisan's criticisms of the Roman de la Rose.]
It is not in the spirit of launching a Hoccleve ‘revival’ that I would invite a re-examination of Hoccleve's ‘Letter of Cupid.’ But poems are historical as well as literary documents, and while no amount of ‘re-examination’ is likely to transform Hoccleve into a major poet on the basis of the ‘Letter,’ a close look at that piece can perhaps reveal him as a clever and articulate witness to the literary fortunes...
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