HOCCLEVE IN HIS SOCIAL CONTEXT

Among other things, the unfortunate poet Thomas Hoccleve is that most characteristic modern literary figure, the little man who tries unsuccessfully to maneuver in a bureaucracy designed to crush him. This Hoccleve persona is one of the most meticulously constructed, endearing, and human in Middle English literature. While Hoccleve's poetry is almost certainly not as feeble as F. J. Furnivall led several generations to believe, we assuredly read Hoccleve chiefly for the autobiographical details he so carefully includes. As Jerome Mitchell notes in our solitary book-length study of the poet, Hoccleve's sole attraction for compilers of Middle English anthologies rests in the autobiographical elements embedded in a handful of his poems.1 Given the importance of this autobiographical element, under standing Hoccleve the Privy Seal clerk is essential to understanding Hoccleve the poet. Hoccleve implicitly urges his readers to judge him by fifteenth-century standards of a successful public career, for his alleged failure as a bureaucrat and churchman is one of the basic ingredients in his persona. Despite Hoccleve's own emphasis on his financial and career problems, among the several excellent literary biographies of the poet none gives more than a passing glance at Hoccleve's place in the royal bureaucracy. H. S. Bennett's popular account in Six Medieval Men and Women presents more hard facts than others, but it is largely an intelligent if selective summary of the description of the Privy Seal office in Thomas Frederick Tout's clas sic Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England.2 The emphasis in many recent Hoccleve studies has been to suggest that much of the supposed autobiographical element about Hoccleve's persona is either metaphorical or a mixture of literary conventions. This essay suggests just the opposite. Seen in his social context, Hoc cleve was exactly what he claimed to be, a conspicuous under achieve^ a man who did not or could not avail himself of the oppor tunities open to him. His poems, for instance, make his life in London sound as isolated and solitary as that of a modern New York apartment dweller. Hoc cleve is nearly always seen alone, haunting taverns and wandering