Thomas Hoccleve's Mother of God and Balade to the Virgin and Christ: Latin and Anglo-Normal Sources
[In the essay below, Stokes examines Hoccleve's sources in order to better appreciate his art and rehabilitate his reputation as a poet. Stokes looks at the influence of the Latin Prayer O intemerata et in aeternum benedicta, specialis et incomparabilis virgo on Hoccleve's “Mother of God.” She also discusses various Anglo-Norman sources for his “Balade to the Virgin and Christ,” including several on women and courtly love.]
The tide of critical appreciation has been turning in favour of Thomas Hoccleve's poetry in recent decades. One of the first scholars to write more positively of Hoccleve's work than had been customary was Jerome Mitchell, whose major re-evaluation was published in 1968.1 Two selections of Hoccleve's verse are now available in paperback editions.2 Acknowledgement of his achievements is extending beyond the areas of interest conceded even by disparaging critics: beyond the successful expression of his indebtedness to his master, Chaucer; beyond the vivid detailing of the malady that afflicted him in 1416 when the substance of his memory ‘went to pleie as for a certein space’;3 beyond his skilful use of apostrophe and dialogue. Hoccleve was a Privy Seal clerk, so that much of his time was spent writing official letters and documents, which may have given rise in the past to a feeling that his writing is likely to be dreary, but attention has now been drawn to the interesting professional ‘bookishness’ or ‘bookness’ of Hoccleve's texts, as well as to the sophisticated creation of the ‘book-making’ persona in his final sequence of poems.4 The holograph manuscripts are carefully and clearly written.5 The introduction to a recent edition of his ‘Letter of Cupid,’ which is an abridged translation, or adaptation, of Christine de Pizan's Epistre, comments on the ‘lively, oddly whimsical, accomplished’ aspects of Hoccleve's writing, and to the ‘slipperiness’ of his apparent anxious sympathy towards women, which has perhaps mistakenly been interpreted as naive and lacking in complexity.6 Even his metres and versification are receiving neutral, if not positive, appraisal.7
The case for a positive re-assessment of the poems is put by M. C. Seymour in the introduction to his Selections from Hoccleve, where it is affirmed that future individual studies will make possible a fuller understanding and a more exact recognition of the poet's value: ‘Further work of this kind, especially a detailed examination of his sources and analogues, will undoubtedly enhance this understanding.’8 In the present article, previously unrecognized or incompletely identified source materials for two of Hoccleve's poems are presented. The first of these is the composite Latin prayer O intemerata et in aeternum benedicta, specialis et incomparabilis virgo, Dei genitrix Maria, the latter part of which yielded some of the material for the ‘Mother of God’ attributed for several centuries to Chaucer, but recognized for the last hundred years as Hoccleve's work. The second is the concluding section of the Anglo-Norman text on which his ‘Balade to the Virgin and Christ’ was based.9
Most of Hoccleve's religious poetry was probably written during his youth, and much of it is devotional poetry in honour of the Virgin Mary. It follows orthodox patterns of belief and expression, but conveys at the same time a strong sense of personal conviction and faith. The focus is often on suffering: on the suffering and Passion of Christ; on the sorrows of the Virgin; on the suffering and penitence of mankind. The flesh is a recurring theme, and the Devil often features more prominently and more grimly in Hoccleve's texts than in his source materials. Yet the poems are trusting and hopeful. The poems to the Virgin are often based on texts which originated as prayers of private devotion, of the type commonly found in a psalter or Book of Hours. Although liturgical and biblical motifs abound, the emphasis is devotional and contemplative.
There is a marked difference between Hoccleve's religious style and the style of his fifteenth-century contemporaries. As Mitchell observes:
Because some poets reveled in aureate diction, rhetoric, and bombastic repetition, many of the Marian lyrics, especially those of Lydgate, are highly affected in style and completely devoid of any genuine, personal religious feeling … Hoccleve's religious verse, however, is quite different … Hoccleve did not adopt the new religious style of the fifteenth century.10
Hoccleve does not employ ‘aureate diction, rhetoric, and bombastic repetition’ in this sense, though his versatility in traditional rhetoric may well have been underestimated.
The expression of orthodox religious beliefs is not confined to the devotional and contemplative poetry. It is found also in Hoccleve's didactic and polemical writing, as for instance in the ‘Remonstrance against Oldcastle,’ in which Oldcastle, later to be executed, is indicted for his Lollard beliefs and involvement. The prevailing sentiment in post-Reformation England having favoured Oldcastle rather than his accusers, Hoccleve's failure to find favour with later generations may perhaps be attributed in part to his role in the persecution of perceived heretics, and to an assumed time-serving ingredient in his position. For late twentieth-century readers there may nevertheless be some interest in Hoccleve's distinctive view of the holy images of the saints that he sets out to defend against the Lollards, however remote his beliefs may be, however mixed his motives. In a notable passage, perhaps more forceful rhetorically than logically, he offers an early association of icons and spectacles in his defence of images as an aid to vision:
Right as a spectacle helpith feeble sighte
Whan a man on the book redith or writ
And causith him to see bet than he mighte
In which spectacle his sighte nat abit,
But gooth thurgh and on the book restith it;
The same may men of ymages seye.
Though the ymage nat the seint be, yit
The sighte vs myngith to the seint to preye.(11)
Hoccleve's viewer knows that the image is not the saint, and does not revere the image as such, yet it can enhance true vision. For Hoccleve, as for Chaucer, iconic representations help the viewer to see the truth.12
‘MOTHER OF GOD’
The latter section of Hoccleve's ‘Mother of God’ is addressed to two figures, the Virgin and St John, the disciple whom Christ loved. The close relationship between ‘Mother of God’ and the composite Latin prayer O intemerata et in aeternum benedicta, specialis et incomparabilis virgo is evident when one compares the concluding sections of the texts as set out below.
The Latin prayer was one of the most widespread of all medieval prayers to the Virgin. It is frequently found in psalters, Books of Hours and books of private devotion, from the twelfth century onwards. St Edmund of Canterbury (1180-1240) is said to have recited it daily. From the fourteenth century onwards it was often attributed, mistakenly, to St Anselm.13
The prayer falls into three parts: the first appeals to the Virgin alone, the second appeals to St John, while the third appeals to both. A. Wilmart suggested that the composite prayer originated in a twelfth-century Cistercian house in France. H. Barré subsequently discovered an earlier version of the first part of the prayer, to the Virgin alone, in the eleventh-century psalter which was written at Arras and taken during the second half of the century to Citeaux.14 This discovery raises the possibility of ‘patchwork composition’: it is possible that three originally separate prayers were fused together, perhaps in the twelfth century, to form the composite tripartite prayer; it is possible that any two of the three parts were written together, and later fused with the third; it is possible that the second and third parts were written as a single continuation, or as accretive continuations, of the first part. Manuscript tradition, as well as the associations with St Edmund and Anselm, show that the composite prayer was particularly popular in England, where it was expanded further in different ways at different times. Usually the expansions involved elaboration of the first part of the prayer, to the Virgin alone. At various stages of composition, vernacular translations and adaptations were made. Where the vernacular renderings include material not demonstrably derived from the Latin, as is the case with Hoccleve's poem, it is not always possible to determine whether such additional material was originally composed in an unidentified Latin source or in the vernacular.
The first 98 lines of Hoccleve's ‘Mother of God’ form an elaborate appeal to the Virgin, interwoven with praise, and these lines may well go back to a Latin, or possibly French, source which further research will identify. About lines 99-140 there can be no doubt: they are derived from the second and third parts of O intemerata.
Working here from a prose exemplar, Hoccleve used the verse form most common in his more ambitious poems, namely the rhyme royal stanza which Chaucer had established to such effect. The balancing of verse structure and sentence structure—at times matching, at times with counterpoint effect and enjambment between lines and stanzas—adds emphasis to the drama in the central image of Christ hanging on the cross, and to the words addressed to the ‘heuenely gemmes tweyne’:
Be yee oure help and our proteccioun
Syn for meryt of your virginitee,
The priuilege of his dileccioun
In yow confermed God vpon a tree
Hangynge / and vnto oon of yow seide he
Right in this wyse / as I reherce can,
‘Beholde heere / lo thy sone, womman’.
And to þat othir / ‘Heer thy modir, lo.’
(120-7)
Hoccleve intensifies and individualizes the central images of the famous prayer. However fervently the prayer was spoken, it will have retained as a prayer a certain formality and impersonality, as a condition of its general validity. There are several phrases in Hoccleve's poem which seem to have a colloquial and poetic immediacy necessarily lacking in the exemplar, such as ‘now do your bysy peyne / To wasshe away our cloudeful offense’ for ‘uestris radiis scelerum meorum effugate nubila’, in which formal metaphor is rendered by inventive transferred epithet.15 In the early part of the poem, for which no direct source has as yet been identified, there are images of the temple, the palace and the womb, interwoven with images of sickness and health and with appeals to the Virgin as mother of mercy and as mediator—‘mene’. The theme of building, house and habitation, is continued in the later section, in each case with more individuality and specificity than in the source. The Latin ‘Vos estis illi duo in quibus Deus pater per filium suum specialiter aedificauit sibi domum’ becomes
Yee been the two, I knowe verraily,
In which the fadir God gan edifie,
By his sone oonly geten specially,
To him an hows.
(113-16)
Again there is emphatic ‘dislocation’ between line and sentence structure. Where the Latin prayer focuses on the Spirit that is to inhabit the heart—‘ut cor meum inuisere et inhabitare dignetur Spiritus almus’—Hoccleve focuses more emphatically and specifically on the dwelling-place within the human heart, his heart, means of our ‘re-creation’:
Helpith now / þat the habitacioun
Of the holy goost, our recreacioun,
Be in myn herte now and eueremore.
(137-9)
The concluding section of Hoccleve's text is reproduced here from the holograph manuscript, San Marino, Henry E. Huntington Library, MS HM 111 [fols 36v-37r]. Modern punctuation has been introduced, except that the holograph indications of breaks in the line—diagonal slashes—are retained. Line and stanza numbering are introduced. The relevant sections of the Latin prayer are reproduced from Wilmart's version [pp. 488-9].
MS HM 111, FOLS 36V-37R
XV
Apostle and freend familier of Cryst
And his ychosen virgyne, seint Ion, (100)
Shynynge apostle & euangelyst,
And best beloued among hem echon,
With our lady preye I thee to been oon
Þat vnto Cryst shal for vs alle preye.
Do this for vs, Crystes derlyng, I seye. (105)
WILMART, PP. 488-9
O Iohannes beatissime, Christi familiaris amice, qui ab eodem domino nostro Iesu Christo uirgo es electus et inter ceteros magis dilectus atque mysteriis caelestibus ultra omnes imbutus, apostolus eius et euangelista factus es praeclarissimus, te inuoco etiam cum matre eiusdem saluatoris, ut mihi opem tuam cum ipsa ferre digneris.
MS HM 111, FOLS 36V-37R
XVI
Marie and Ion, heuenely gemmes tweyne,
O lightes two shynynge in the presence
Of our lord God / now do your bysy peyne
To wasshe away our cloudeful offense,
So þat we mowen make resistence (110)
Ageyn the feend and make him to bewaille
Þat your preyere may so moche auaille.
WILMART, PP. 488-9
O duae gemmae caelestes, Maria et Iohannes, o duo luminaria diuinitus ante Deum lucentia, uestris radiis scelerum meorum effugate nubila.
MS HM 111, FOLS 36V-37R
XVII
Yee been the two, I knowe verraily,
In which the fadir God gan edifie,
By his sone oonly geten specially, (115)
To him an hows / wherfore I to yow crye,
Beeth leches of our synful maladie.
Preyeth to God / lord of misericorde,
Oure olde giltes / þat he nat recorde.
WILMART, PP. 488-9
Vos estis illi duo in quibus Deus pater per filium suum specialiter aedificauit sibi domum
MS HM 111, FOLS 36V-37R
XVIII
Be yee oure help and our proteccioun (120)
Syn for meryt of your virginitee,
The priuilege of his dileccioun
In you confermed God vpon a tree
Hangynge / and vnto oon of yow seide he
Right in this wyse / as I reherce can, (125)
‘Beholde heere, lo / thy sone, womman’.
WILMART, PP. 488-9
et in quibus ipse filius Dei patris unigenitus ob sincerissimae uirginitatis meritum dilectionis suae confirmavit privilegium in cruce pendens, uni vestrum ita dicens: Mulier ecce filius tuus
MS HM 111, FOLS 36V-37R
XIX
And to þat othir / ‘Heer thy modir, lo.’
Than preye I thee / þat for the greet swetnesse
Of the hy loue þat God twixt yow two
(130) With his mowth made / and of his noblesse (130)
Conioyned hath yow / thurgh his blisfulnesse,
As modir and sone, helpe vs in our neede
And for our giltes make oure hertes bleede.
WILMART, PP. 488-9
deinde ad alium: Ecce mater tua. In huius ergo sacratissimi amoris dulcedine qua ita tunc ore dominico uelut mater et filius inuicem coniuncti estis,
MS HM 111, FOLS 36V-37R
XX
Vnto yow tweyne / I my soule commende,
Marie and Iohan, for my sauuacioun. (135)
Helpith now / þat the habitacioun
Of the holy goost, our recreacioun,
Be in myn herte now and eueremore,
And of my soule / wasshe away the sore. Amen. (140)
WILMART, PP. 488-9
uobis duobus ego peccator corpus et animam meam commendo, ut omnibus horis atque momentis intus et existere dignemini … Agite queso, agite uestris gloriosis precibus ut cor meum inuisere et inhabitare dignetur Spiritus almus, qui me a cuntis uitiorum sordibus expurget.
‘BALADE TO THE VIRGIN AND CHRIST’
It has long been known that the ‘Balade to the Virgin and Christ,’ commissioned by Robert Chichele, master of the Grocers' Company, mayor of London and brother of Archbishop Chichele, was derived from a French source. The manuscript rubric runs: ‘Ceste balade ensuyante feust translatee au commandement de mon Meistre Robert Chichele’. H. E. Sandison identified an Anglo-Norman text with the heading Pastourelle, which has survived in a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose belonging to St John's College, Cambridge,16 as the original of the first part of Hoccleve's poem. Sandison printed the Cambridge version of the Anglo-Norman text and the Middle English text for comparison, but since the last forty lines of the Anglo-Norman text are missing in the Cambridge manuscript the comparison remained incomplete. The Pastourelle is written in a fifteenth-century hand on a sheet originally left blank at the end of the manuscript. It is the second short text added, the first being a version of the Anglo-Norman Bonté de femmes, a light-hearted equivocal piece in defence of women which draws on several of the well-known ‘biblical’ and apocryphal arguments for the superiority of women, beginning with the manner of woman's creation from bone rather than mud. These arguments were used by Christine de Pizan, and by Hoccleve in his rendering of Christine's Epistre and in other poems, though not in the two under discussion here. With the two additional poems at the end, the Cambridge manuscript becomes something of a compendium of late medieval attitudes to women, ranging from the courtly love and mystical devotion of the Roman de la Rose, through the semi-serious Bonté de femmes, to the devotional and penitential stanzas of the ‘Balade.’
Two more manuscripts containing the Anglo-Norman text are housed in the British Library: one of these is a fourteenth-century miscellany, which lacks four stanzas in the earlier section; the other is a fifteenth-century miscellany which contains the entire text. The fourteenth-century manuscript, MS Add. 44949, is known as the Tywardreath Psalter.17 It was written in the north of England during the reign of Edward III, and found its way to Tywardreath in Cornwall, whence the name; by the nineteenth century at the latest it was in the possession of the Clifford family of south Devon. Psalter and calendar are preceded by devotional prayers and verses in Latin and French, including the Pastourelle. The fifteenth-century manuscript, MS Royal 20 B.iii, contains an Anglo-Norman treatise on the love of God, Miroir pour bien vivre, and at the end some devotional prayers and verses, including the Pastourelle. Collation of the three Anglo-Norman manuscripts shows that the two British Library versions are closely related to each other, and often share a reading which is substantially different from that of the Cambridge version. Although it is possible that the British Library versions are closer to the text known to Hoccleve than is the Cambridge version, this cannot be demonstrated with any certainty.
It will be noted that Hoccleve made significant alterations to his source material in the sequence of stanzas and arrangement of material, in content, in style and imagery, and in versification. He was, like many of his predecessors and successors, a responsive reader and ‘renewer’ of received material.
His starting-point in this instance was an Anglo-Norman text in the medieval mainstream tradition of courtly devotional and penitential poetry, fitting as an ‘afterthought’ in a manuscript of the Roman de la Rose. The Cambridge manuscript title, Pastourelle, retained here for convenience of reference, is in keeping with the opening stanza only, and may perhaps have been provided by association with the Roman de la Rose. The first stanza of the Anglo-Norman poem describes a garden in the month of May, with beautiful flowers and birdsong, but the thoughts of the narrative persona are drawn from idyllic description to contemplation of the scene at the cross, and death. From stanza iv, the stanzas appeal alternately to the Virgin and to Christ, and narration is interspersed with confession of sins, dwelling on the frailty of the flesh. Christ is the chivalric champion, the king who conquered death, God incarnate who suffered death on the cross for the redemption of mankind, sovereign lord, just judge, the merchant who has paid the price for mortal merchandise, to whom the sinner appeals for help in the battle against sin, the flesh and the Devil. Mary is maiden, noble lady, consort and virgin, worker of miracles, precious jewel, healer, full of grace, solace in time of sorrow, port after perilous sea, peerless flower of womanhood, refuge for the penitent sinner, and queen. These epithets are the common currency of medieval Marian verse, and Hoccleve works most of them into his text; but as a cleric employed in the fifteenth-century equivalent of the civil service, he was at several removes from medieval chivalry, and some of the distinctively feudal imagery of the Anglo-Norman text is replaced in his version by other familiar images of the Christian pilgrimage, wayfaring and seafaring. In the Anglo-Norman text, the Virgin is asked to become the poet's shield and to help him in his hour of need, whereas the English text has the pilgrim's image of the Virgin as the ‘soules ship’. The traditional figure of Christ the physician is replaced in Hoccleve's rendering by an appeal to the redemptive power of Christ's blood. The thematic linking of imagery in the Anglo-Norman text, with the image of Christ the merchant, entreated to ‘redeem’ his merchandise, preceding the appeal for grace in granting of the besaunt, is absent from Hoccleve's less specific ending. Hoccleve's re-ordering of the sequence of the final stanzas would in any case have broken the close link between merchant and ‘coin’, besaunt.
The Anglo-Norman text is composed in paired eight-line stanzas, with octosyllabic lines rhyming a b a b a b a b. Hoccleve uses instead the ‘balade’ form, the eight-line stanza with rhyme scheme a b a b b c b c, and does not structure the stanzas in pairs. Whereas the Anglo-Norman stanza tends to fall into two halves of equal length. Hoccleve's stanza tends to fall into one five-line + one three-line unit. This involves some expansion and some compression of the Anglo-Norman material, and the balancing of asymmetrical metrical structures and sentence structures again gives scope for variety and flexibility.
The Anglo-Norman text relies rather heavily on alliterative emphasis, particularly in the repetitive penitential formulas, as for instance in the second stanza reproduced below, with ‘Peche puant … Grant peril porte … Qar ci penaunce ou paine dure’, or in the last two stanzas ‘Mercy mellez, fesaunt favour / A l'alme qi feistez a ta figure’ and ‘Raine, refu a repentaunt / Medicine mettez a ma greuance’. This device, though still evident in Hoccleve's version, is used by him more lightly.
The last forty lines of Hoccleve's poem (that is, those for which Sandison failed to find a parallel) are given here from MS HM 111 [fols 46r-47r]. The corresponding stanzas from the Anglo-Norman text are reproduced from BL MS Royal 20.B.iii, fols 97v-98r, with substantial variants from BL MS Add. 44949, fols 9v-10r. Modern punctuation has been introduced, except that the holograph divisions within the line—diagonal slashes—are retained. The Anglo-Norman stanzas are presented in the sequence in which Hoccleve used them, not as they are in the British Library manuscripts, but the manuscript sequence of stanzas is indicated in brackets.
MS HM 111, FOLS 46R-47R
XVI
Blessid virgyne, ensample of al vertu,
Þat peere hast noon / of wommanhode flour,
For the loue of thy sone, our Lord Ihesu,
Strengthe vs to doon him seruice & honour.
Lady, be mene vnto our Sauueour, (125)
Þat our soules þat the feend waytith ay
To hente / & wolde of hem be possessour,
Ne sese hem nat in the vengeable day.
MS ROYAL 20 B.III, FOLS 97V-98R
[XVIII]
Plaine de grace, virgine pure,
Sule sanz pere, de femes flour,
Afforsez ma frele nature
De Dieu seruere a soun honour;
Per ta requeste mettez cure,
A mon meschif moustrez socour,
Qi m'alme soit nette, qite & sure
De trouer ioie a mon derain iour.
MS HM 111, FOLS 46R-47R
XVII
The flesshe / the world / & eeke the feend my fo
My wittes alle han at hir retenance: (130)
They to my soule doon annoy & wo,
For why, Lord, dreede I me of thy vengeance.
With mercy, my soule into blisse enhance.
Worthy marchant, saue thy marchandie,
Which þat thow boghtest with dethes penance; (135)
Lat nat the feend haue of vs the maistrie.
MS ROYAL 20 B.III, FOLS 97V-98R
[XIX]
Ma char, le munde, le ueuz tiraunt,
Mes senz unt prise en retenaunce,
Contre ma foi, faus recreaunt,
Dount ieo me dout de gref vengeaunce.
Merci, merci, Seignour veillaunt,
Pete prengnes de ta semblaunce;
Sauuez le mercez, trecher marchaunt,
Qe rechatastes a gref penaunce.
MS HM 111, FOLS 46R-47R
XVIII
Excellent lady, in thy thoght impresse
How & why thy chyld souffrid his tormente;
Preye him to haue on vs swich tendrenesse,
þat in the feendes net we be nat hent. (140)
At the day of his sterne iugement,
Lat nat him leese þat he by deeth boghte.
I woot wel / therto hath he no talent:
Mynge him theron / for thee so to doon / oghte.
MS ROYAL 20 B.III, FOLS 97V-98R
[XVI]
Ma Dame, pensez pur qoi, coment
Ihesu soun cors suffri pener;
Per taunt li priez mout tendrement
Qi mez defautez deyngne staunger.
E estre propiez au iugement
& m'alme de payne deliuer,
Q'il ne perde par mautalent
Qi par sa mort gayna si cher.
MS HM 111, FOLS 46R-47R
XIX
Whan in a man, synne growith & rypith,
The fruyt of it is ful of bittirnesse;
But penitence cleene away it wypith,
And to the soule yeueth greet swetnesse.
O steerne Iuge / with thy rightwisnesse,
Medle thy mercy / and shewe vs fauour. (150)
Vnto our soules, maad to thy liknesse,
Graunte pardoun of our stynkyng errour.
MS ROYAL 20 B.III, FOLS 97V-98R
[XVII]
Peche puant, quaunt crest & mure,
Grant peril porte au bref iour,
Qar ci penaunce ou paine dure
Aillours quert a chief de tour.
Sire, gentiel iuge, oue ta droiture
Mercy mellez, fesaunt fauour
A l'alme qi feistez a ta figure,
& pardoun grauntez a moi pechour.
MS HM 111, FOLS 46R-47R
XX
O glorious qweene / to the repentaunt
Þat art refuyt / socour and medecyne,
Lat nat the foule feend make his auaunt, (155)
Þat he hath thee byreft any of thyne.
Thurgh thy preyere, thow thy sone enclyne
His merciable grace / on vs to reyne.
Be tendre of vs / o thow blissid virgyne,
For if thee list / we shuln to blisse atteyne. (160)
C'est tout
MS ROYAL 20 B.III, FOLS 97V-98R
[XX]
Raine, refu a repentaunt,
Medicine mettez a ma greuance,
Pur moi soiez toun fitz priaunt
Qe de sa merci eie allegaunce
Et grace de apaier soun besaunt
En dit, en fet a sa plesaunce,
E en pes uiure deesore auaunt
Saunz peche, doloure e encombraunce.
MS ADD. 44949, FOLS 9V-10R
122 des femmes
126 me mettre s
129 m. si vielz
132 de grant v.
136 Qe rechatez a
138 Ihesu soeffri s.c.
139 Pur taunt li priez tendrement
140 Mes defautes deigne excuser
142 M'alme d.p. deliuerer
143 Ke ne
146 Peril port & brief douzour
147 Kar penaunce
148 Ailours est
151 ta feture
152 grantez mon salueour
156 de merci
157 deprouer s.b.
159 En p.v. desore en auaunt
160 saunz peyne dolour
Notes
-
J. Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve (Urbana, Chicago and London, 1968).
-
Selections from Hoccleve, ed. M. C. Seymour (Oxford, 1981); Thomas Hoccleve: Selected Poems, ed. B. O'Donoghue (Manchester, 1982).
-
The Complaint of Hoccleve, line 51.
-
J. Burrow, ‘The poet and the book’, in Genres, Themes and Images in English Literature: The J. A. W. Bennett Memorial Lectures, Perugia, 1986, ed. P. Boitani and A. Torti (Tübingen, 1988), pp. 230-45. Professor Burrow's Hoccleve (Variorum Series, 1994) had unfortunately not appeared when this article was in preparation.
-
The help given by the Huntington Library, San Marino, in providing copies of the holograph manuscripts and in giving permission for extracts from the texts to be reproduced, is gratefully acknowledged.
-
T. S. Fenster and M. C. Erler, Poems of Cupid, God of Love (Leiden, 1990), p. 159.
-
See, e.g., E. G. Stanley, ‘Chaucer's metre after Chaucer, I: Chaucer to Hoccleve’, Notes and Queries, 234 (1989), 11-23. Professor Burrow has also drawn my attention to J. A. Jefferson, ‘The Hoccleve holographs and Hoccleve's metrical practice’, in Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature, ed. Derek Pearsall (Cambridge, 1987), pp. 95-109.
-
Selections, ed. Seymour, p. xxxiii.
-
For early editions, see Hoccleve's Works: The Minor Poems, vol. I, ed. F. J. Furnivall, rev. A. I. Doyle and J. Mitchell, EETS, ES 61 (1892; rev. edn London, 1970); vol. II, ed. I. Gollancz, rev. A. I. Doyle and J. Mitchell, EETS, ES 73 (1892; rev. edn London, 1970).
-
Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve, pp. 34-5.
-
Remonstrance against Oldcastle, lines 417-24 (Selections, ed. Seymour, p. 71).
-
OED's earliest citations for ‘spectacle(s)’ sg. and pl. meaning ‘a device for assisting defective eyesight’, used figuratively and literally, are drawn from Chaucer and from this Hoccleve passage.
-
See A. Wilmart, Les Auteurs spirituels du moyen âge latin (Paris, 1932), pp. 474-504, for a full discussion of the prayer, and for the text.
-
H. Barré, ‘Le Psautier de Robert de Molesme’, in Prières anciennes de l'occident à la mère du Sauveur (Paris, 1963), p. 195.
-
The inventiveness may of course be derivative. For the possibility that ‘bysy peyne’ is derived from Chaucer's ‘Balade to Truth,’ line 108, see Selections, ed. Seymour, p. 105.
-
Cambridge, St John's College, MS G 5. See H. E. Sandison, ‘En mon deduit a moys de may’, in Vassar Mediaeval Studies, ed. C. F. Fiske (New Haven, Conn., 1923), pp. 235-44.
-
The manuscript was described by A. Långfors, ‘Notice et extraits du manuscrit Additional 44949 du Musée Britannique’, Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, 40 (1948), 97-123. Assistance from the staff of the British Library Manuscripts Collection and permission to reproduce the text from MS Royal 20 B.iii, with variants from MS Add. 44949, are gratefully acknowledged.
Get Ahead with eNotes
Start your 48-hour free trial to access everything you need to rise to the top of the class. Enjoy expert answers and study guides ad-free and take your learning to the next level.
Already a member? Log in here.