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Thomas Hoccleve and the Poetics of Reading Elon Lang Washington University in St Washington University in St. Louis Washington University Open Scholarship All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) January 2010 Thomas Hoccleve and the Poetics of Reading Elon Lang Washington University in St. Louis Follow this and additional works at: https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd Recommended Citation Lang, Elon, "Thomas Hoccleve and the Poetics of Reading" (2010). All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs). 192. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/etd/192 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by Washington University Open Scholarship. It has been accepted for inclusion in All Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) by an authorized administrator of Washington University Open Scholarship. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY IN ST. LOUIS Department of English and American Literature Dissertation Examination Committee: David Lawton, Chair Antony Hasler William Layher Joseph Loewenstein William McKelvy Jessica Rosenfeld THOMAS HOCCLEVE AND THE POETICS OF READING by Elon Meir Lang A dissertation presented to the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy August 2010 Saint Louis, Missouri copyright by Elon Meir Lang August 2010 Acknowledgements In writing this dissertation on Thomas Hoccleve, who so often describes his reliance on the support of patrons in his poetry, I have become very conscious of my own indebtedness to numerous institutions and individuals for their generous patronage. I am grateful to the Washington University Department of English and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for their academic and financial support during my graduate student career. I feel fortunate to have been part of a department and school that have enabled me to do research at domestic and international archives through both independent funding initiatives and an association with the Newberry Library Consortium. As this project has developed, I have been especially grateful for the advice of David Lawton and Jessica Rosenfeld. From my first graduate school seminar, Prof. Lawton has inspired me with his vision of the middle ages and I thank him for rigorously challenging me to find my own critical voice in the field. Likewise, I thank Prof. Rosenfeld for her detailed guidance and for encouraging me to see the “big picture” in this dissertation while working with me to sharpen my writing and analysis. Among the many readers I have been lucky to have for this project, I thank Antony Hasler, William Layher, Joe Loewenstein, and Bill McKelvy for making time in their busy schedules for my examination. I thank all the participants in the department Dissertation Workshop, including Prof. McKelvy, for their generous feedback on early drafts of my chapters. I also thank my fellow medievalists—Susan Lowther, Sarah Noonan, Robert Patterson, and Jessica Rezunyk—for their friendship and collegiality. Additionally, I specially thank Jane Frank, Keya Kraft, Ryan Lowe, Doug Thompson, and Courtney Weiss for lending their editorial expertise in my final month of drafting. I ii am also especially grateful to Rick Godden for sharing his time and intellectual energy with me on this project and throughout the many years we have been friends. I feel very fortunate to have benefited from the support and friendship of Kathy Schneider and Dorothy Negri. They have been instrumental in the completion of this project and my success as a student through their dedication to English Department graduate students, their tireless advocacy and encouragement, and their excellent coffee. For helping me gain access to research materials, I thank Kris Helbling and Washington University’s Olin Library and I thank Stephanie Kamath for copies of research notes. I also thank David Watt for sending me advance copies of forthcoming publications and for sharing with me his enthusiasm for Hoccleve. I offer a special note of thanks, as well, to Charles Blyth for gifting me his personal archive of microfilms and collation notes that he compiled while working on his edition of the Regiment of Princes. I am incalculably grateful for the unending generosity and emotional support of my family: Claudia and Yaron Lang, Dov and Mallory Lang, Rose and Bob Traines, Cathy and Jerry Church, Amanda and Doug Smith, and Abby Church. In all I do, I seek to emulate the premium value they place on education and hard work. I feel deeply privileged to have the opportunity to turn the love of reading my parents taught me as a child into the foundation for my profession. Finally, above all, I thank my wife Jessica Church for her love, encouragement, and patience, and for having faith in me even when I did not. I do not have adequate words to express how much I love, appreciate, admire, and value her as my partner in life. Jess, you fill my heart every day: I dedicate this dissertation to you and to our family’s future. iii Table of Contents Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………… ii List of Figures….………………………………………………………………………... vi Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………….. viii Introduction: Casting the Reader’s Shadow…………………………………………... 1 Reading, Manuscripts, and Performance…………………………………………….…. 7 Seeking Historical Meanings of Texts in Use and Reception………………………….18 The Shadow of Hoccleve Reading in La Male Regle…………………………………. 30 Chapter 1: Intervocality and the Authority of the Reader in the Regiment of Princes…………………………………………………………………….. 43 The Regiment of Princes: Compiler as Reader………………………………………... 47 Dispersing Authority Among Readers……………………………………………….... 53 Re-Centering Modern Conceptions of Medieval Authority on the Reader………….... 64 Reading in the Regiment………………………………………………………………. 71 The Regiment’s Speculative Reading Histories..……………………………………… 80 Readers’ Authority in the Regiment and its MSS: A Response to Hierarchies……….. 91 Chapter 2: Visual and Vocal Dialogics: Hoccleve’s Scripts for Reading Performances……………………………………………………………... 97 Manuscript Reading Performances: A Brief Theorization…………………………... 102 Two of Hoccleve’s Scripts for Reading Performances………………………………. 108 Performing Ballads to Henry Somer……………………………………………….. 109 Performance and the Iconography of Chaucer in the Regiment of Princes………... 115 iv Hoccleve’s Performances of Lerne to Dye and MS Bodley 221’s Reading Script….. 124 Death Education: A Reading Performance…..……………………………..……… 126 Reading Across Scripted Stanza Boundaries in MS Bodley 221’s Lerne to Dye…. 134 Marks of Preserved Readers’ Performances…………………………………………. 142 Chapter 3: Hoccleve’s Conflict with Readers’ Authority in the Letter of Cupid..... 152 Staging an Intertextual Game: Christine de Pizan Meets Chaucer…………………... 155 Hoccleve’s Case for the Letter of Cupid’s Misreading……………………………… 166 Hoccleve’s Attempt to Reshape the Letter’s Representation of his Authority……… 172 Royal Pronouns in HM 744………………………………………………………... 173 A History of Shuffled Stanzas……………………………………………………... 180 The Success of the Letter’s Displacement of Authority……………………………... 197 Conclusion: Hoccleve in the House of Rumor……………………………………… 214 Future Directions: Skelton in the Court of Fame……………………………………. 222 Appendix A: Transcription of British Library MS Harley 4826, f. 83r…………... 228 Appendix B: Collations of the Letter of Cupid’s First-Person Pronouns………….. 229 Appendix C: The Letter of Cupid Stanza Disarrangement in MS Fairfax 16…….. 232 Appendix D: Compared Contents of 15th-Century Letter of Cupid MSS…………. 234 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………... 236 Manuscripts………………………………………………………………………….. 236 Primary Sources Printed Works..……………………………………………………. 238 Secondary Sources…………………………………………………………………… 241 v List of Figures Figure 0.1: Facing transcriptions of two stanzas from La Male Regle de T. Hoccleue in Huntington Library MS HM 111 and Canterbury Cathedral Archive Register O.................................................................... 36 Figure 1.1: Image of Regiment of Princes lines 4271-7 in British Library MS Arundel 38, f. 78r (detail), from British Library microfilm.…..…………87 Figure 1.2: Image of Regiment of Princes lines 4271-7 in Newberry Library MS 33.7, f. 62r (detail), photo by author………………………………... 87 Figure 2.1: Illuminations of readers: images of British Library (a) MS Harley 2813, f. 4r (detail), (b) MS Harley 4350, f. 68v (detail), from BLCIM....................................................................................................... 97 Figure 2.2: Image of British Library, MS Harley 4350, f. 68v, from BLCIM.……….… 98 Figure 2.3: Hoccleve’s song to Henry Somer: image of Huntington Library, MS HM 111, f. 39v (detail), from Hoccl Facs.………………………... 111 Figure 2.4: Chaucer portrait: image of British Library, MS Harley 4866, f. 88r (detail), from BLCIM ………………………………………………….. 116 Figure 2.5: Chaucer portrait: image of British Library MS Royal 17 D.vi, f. 93v (detail), from BLCIM………………………..…………………………. 118 Figure 2.6: (a) Image of Huntington Library MS HM 744, f. 53r (detail), the opening of Lerne to Dye in Hoccleve’s hand, showing his format for stanza breaks, from Digital Scriptorium (http://www.digital- scriptorium.org/). (b) Image of Oxford Bodleian Library MS Bodley 221, f. 30r (detail), the opening of Lerne to Dye, showing the stanza-marking lines and bracketing of the rubricator, photo by Bodleian Library……….…………………………………………… 135 Figure 2.7: Image of MS Bodley 221, f. 31v, 32r (details), the 8-line stanza formed between LtoD lines 123-130, photo by Bodleian Library..……. 136 Figure 2.8: Image of
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