Thomas Hoccleve's Collected Shorter Poems: A Critical Edition of the Huntington Holographs [Hardcover]

Thomas Hoccleve, one of the most well-known figures in 15th-century middle English literature, produced the first set of 'collected poems' in the English language. This is the first full modern edition of those poems. The collection showcases Hoccleve's role as a virtuosic religious writer, his early experiments in autobiography, and his role as a deft translator of Latin and French texts.Thomas Hoccleve produced the first author-curated 'collected poems' in the English language, preserved in two complementary manuscripts: Huntington Library, MSS HM 111 and HM 744 (copied 1422-26). This is the first full modern edition of these poems. The twenty-eight pieces span Hoccleve's entire career: they range from stirring devotional verse, to playful autobiography, deft translations of Latin and French texts, and timely political verse. The collection comprises the entirety of Hoccleve's poetic corpus, save his two longer works, the Regiment of Princes and the Series. It includes some of Hoccleve's most celebrated and widely studied poems, including 'The Epistle of Cupid', 'La Male Regle', 'To Sir John Oldcastle', 'Complaint Paramount', 'Learn to Die', and 'The Court of Good Company'. This edition engages for the first time with newly identified sources of poems; it also offers comprehensive textual variants for the poems, a full up-to-date chronology, and explanatory notes that engage with the wealth of recent scholarship on Hoccleve ? including newly discovered details about Hoccleve's life and the dates of his poems, his relationship with heresy and orthodox reform movements, and his positioning within London scribal circles and coterie readerships.ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHRONOLOGY
LIST OF MANUSCRIPTS & SIGLA
INTRODUCTION

NOTES ON EDITORIAL PRACTICE

HM 111
1. Complaint Paramount 2. To Sir John Oldcastle 3. La Male Regle 4. For Henry V at Kennington 5-6. Knights of the Garter 7. Mother of Life 8. The Bones of Richard II 9. Balade to Edward, Duke of York l³Í