Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-r5fsc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T16:22:57.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hoccleve, the Virgin, and the Politics of Complaint

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Jennifer E. Bryan
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

What is the relation between Marian lament and the distinctively modern, autobiographical complaints of Thomas Hoccleve? What, moreover, is the relation between Hoccleve's performances of private misery and his ability to offer advice and counsel to princes? This article argues that Hoccleve's “Complaint of the Virgin” can teach us to recognize the complex interweaving of gender, genre, ideality, and excess that informs Hocclevean complaints more generally. “The Complaint of the Virgin” explores a woman's exemplary transition from subversive investment in private connection and private suffering to self-abnegation and participation in public power. In doing so, the poem provides a model for Hoccleve's own movements between marginalized interiority and public rhetoric—and for his meditation between Lancastrian subjects and their sovereign. The Virgin offers a lesson in the 1364 Abstracts [PMLA pleasures and power of complaint, the disciplining of interiority, and the production of social relations through spectacle and sacrifice.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 117 , Issue 5 , October 2002 , pp. 1172 - 1187
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2002

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Alexiou, Margaret. The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1974.Google Scholar
Armstrong, C. A. J. “The Piety of Cicely, Duchess of York: A Study in Late Medieval Culture.” England, France, and Burgundy in the Fifteenth Century. London: Hambledon, 1983. 135–56.Google Scholar
Bell, Susan Groag. “Medieval Women Book Owners: Arbiters of Lay Piety and Ambassadors of Culture.” Signs 7 (1982): 742–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Berryman, John. “Dream Song 14.” The Dream Songs. 1959. New York: Farrar, 1969. 16.Google Scholar
Bestul, Thomas. Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society. Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1996.Google Scholar
Burrow, J. A. “Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve.” Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982): 389–412.Google Scholar
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. The Riverside Chaucer. Ed. Benson, Larry. 3rd ed. Boston: Houghton, 1987. 471–586.Google Scholar
The Cloud of Unknowing and the Book of Privy Counselling. Ed. Hodgson, Phyllis. Early English Text Soc. os 218. 1944. New York: Oxford UP, 1973.Google Scholar
Davenport, W. A. Chaucer: Complaint and Narrative. Cambridge: Brewer, 1988.Google Scholar
Deanseley, Margaret. “Vernacular Books in England in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries.” Modern Language Review 25 (1920): 349–58.Google Scholar
Guillaume de, Deguilleville. Le pélerinage de l'ame. Ed. Stürzinger, J. J. London: Nichols and Sons, 1895.Google Scholar
Fradenburg, Louise. “Voice Memorial: Loss and Reparation in Chaucer's Poetry.” Exemplaria 2 (1990): 170–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gillespie, Vincent. “Vernacular Books of Religion.” Sargent, De Cella 317–39.Google Scholar
Greetham, D. C. “Self-Referential Artifacts: Hoccleve's Persona as a Literary Device.” Modern Philology 86 (1989): 242–51.Google Scholar
Harris, Kate. “Patrons, Buyers, and Owners: The Evidence for Ownership and the Role of Book Owners in Book Production and the Book Trade.” Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475. Ed. Griffiths, Jeremy and Pearsall, Derek. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989. 163–99.Google Scholar
Hasler, Antony. “Hoccleve's Unregimented Body.” Paragraph 13 (1990): 164–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hilton, Walter. “On the Mixed Life.” Yorkshire Writers: Richard Rolle of Hampole and His Followers. Ed. Horstman, C. Vol. 1. New York: Macmillan, 1895–96. 264–92. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Hoccleve, Thomas. Hoccleve's Works: The Minor Poems. Ed. Frederick J. Furnivall and I. Gollancz. Early English Text Soc. extra ser. 61, 73. 1892, 1925. Rev. ed. London: Oxford UP, 1970.Google Scholar
Hoccleve, Thomas. The Regement of Princes. The Regement of Princes and Fourteen Minor Poems. Ed. Furnivall, Frederick J. Early English Text Soc. extra ser. 72. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, and Co., 1897. 1–197. Vol. 3 of Hoccleve's Works.Google Scholar
The Holy Bible: Douay Rheims Version. 1899. Trans. Richard Challoner. Rockford: Tan, 1971.Google Scholar
Hughes, Jonathan. Pastors and Visionaries: Religion and Secular Life in Late Medieval Yorkshire. Wolfeboro: Boydell, 1988.Google Scholar
Hussey, S. S. “The Audience for the Middle English Mystics.” Sargent, De Cella 109–22.Google Scholar
Hutchison, Anne. “Devotional Reading in the Monastery and in the Late Medieval Household.” Sargent, De Cella 215–28.Google Scholar
Keiser, George R. “The Middle English Planctus Mariae and the Rhetoric of Pathos.” The Popular Literature of Medieval England. Ed. Heffernan, Thomas J. Knoxville: U of Tennessee P, 1985. 167–94.Google Scholar
Keiser, George R. “The Mystics and the Early English Printers: The Economics of Devotionalism.” The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England. Ed. Glasscoe, Marion. Cambridge: Brewer, 1987. 9–25.Google Scholar
Keiser, George R. “‘Noght How Lang Man Lifs; Bot How Wele’: The Laity and the Ladder of Perfection.” Sargent, De Cella 145–60.Google Scholar
Keiser, George R. “‘To Knawe God Almyghtyn’: Robert Thornton's Devotional Book.” Spätmittelalterliche geistliche Literatur in der Nationalsprache. Ed. Hogg, James. Salzburg: Inst. für Anglistik und Americanistik, U Salzburg, 1984. 103–29.Google Scholar
Knapp, Ethan. “Bureaucratic Identity and the Construction of the Self in Hoccleve's Formulary and La Male Regle.” Speculum 74 (1999): 357–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Knapp, Ethan. “Eulogies and Usurpations: Hoccleve and Chaucer Revisited.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1999): 247–73.Google Scholar
Lawton, David. “Dullness and the Fifteenth Century.” English Literary History 54 (1987): 761–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Luria, and Hoffman, Richard, eds. Middle English Lyrics. New York: Norton, 1974.Google Scholar
Sarah, McNamer. “The Virgin and the Voice of Protest.” Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve. Ed. Morse, Charlotte and Yeager, Robert. Asheville: Pegasus, 2001. 505–23.Google Scholar
Meale, Carol. “‘… Alle the Bokes That I Have of Latyn, Englisch, and Frensch’: Laywomen and Their Books in Late Medieval England.” Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500. Ed. Meale. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 128–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
“Outer, n.2.” Def. 1. The Oxford English Dictionary, Online Edition. 2nd ed. Mar. 2000. Oxford UP. 15 May 2001 <http://www.oed.com/>..>Google Scholar
Pantin, W. A. “Instructions for a Devout and Literate Layman.” Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to Richard William Hunt. Ed. Alexander, J. J. G. and Gibson, M. T. London: Clarendon, 1976. 398–422.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lee. “Making Identities in Fifteenth-Century England: Henry V and John Lydgate.” New Historical Literary Study: Essays on Reproducing Texts, Representing History. Ed. Cox, Jeffrey and Reynolds, Larry. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1993. 69–107.Google Scholar
Patterson, Lee. “Writing Amorous Wrongs: Chaucer and the Order of Complaint.” The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard. Ed. Dean, James and Zacher, Christian. Newark: U of Delaware P, 1992. 55–71.Google Scholar
Pearsall, Derek. “Hoccleve's Regement of Princes: The Poetics of Royal Self-Representation.” Speculum 69 (1994): 386–410.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
The Prickynge of Love. Ed. Kane, Harold. Vol. 1. Elizabethan and Renaissance Studies 92:10–11. U Salzburg: Salzburg Studies in English Lit., 1983. 2 vols.Google Scholar
Riddy, Felicity. “‘Women Talking about the Things of God’: A Late Medieval Subculture.” Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500. Ed. Meale, Carol. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1993. 104–27.Google Scholar
Sargent, Michael, ed. De Cella in Seculum. Cambridge: Brewer, 1989.Google Scholar
Sargent, Michael. “Ruusbroek in England: The Chastising of God's Children and Related Works.” Historia et Spiritualitas Cartusiensis Colloquii Quarti Internationalis Acta. Ed. de Grauwe, Jan. Destelbergen: De Grauwe, 1983. 303–12.Google Scholar
Scanlon, Larry. “The King's Two Voices: Narrative and Power in Hoccleve's Regement of Princes.” Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380–1530. Ed. Patterson, Lee. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990. 216–47.Google Scholar
Simpson, James. “Nobody's Man: Thomas Hoccleve's Regement of Princes.” London and Europe in the Later Middle Ages. Ed. Boffey, Julia and King, Pamela. London: Queen Mary and Westfield Coll., 1995. 149–80.Google Scholar
Stanbury, Sarah. “The Virgin's Gaze: Spectacle and Transgression in Middle English Lyrics of the Passion.” PMLA 106 (1991): 1083–93.Google Scholar
Strohm, Paul. England's Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399–1422. New Haven: Ya le UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Tanner, Norman P. The Church in Late Medieval Norwich, 1370–1532. Toronto: Pontifical Inst. of Medieval Studies, 1984.Google Scholar
Thornley, Eva. “The Middle English Penitential Lyric and Hoccleve's Autobiographical Poetry.” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 68 (1967): 295–321.Google Scholar
Tolmie, Sarah. “The Prive Scilence of Thomas Hoccleve.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22 (2000): 281–309.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Torti, Anna. The Glass of Form: Mirroring Structures from Chaucer to Skelton. Cambridge: Brewer, 1991.Google Scholar
The Tretys of Love. Ed. Fisher, John H. Early English Text Soc. os 223. London: Oxford UP, 1951.Google Scholar