SOURCE: Fleming, John V. “Hoccleve's Letter of Cupid and the ‘Quarrel’ over the Roman de la Rose.” Medium Aevum 40, no. 1 (1971): 21-40.

In this essay, Fleming examines the “Letter of Cupid,” Hoccleve's translation of Christine de Pisan's L'Epistre au Dieu d'Amours. Instead of seeing the work as a critique of de Pisan's defense of women, Fleming proposes that the “Letter of Cupid” obliquely attacks de Pisan's criticisms of the Roman de la Rose.

It is not in the spirit of launching a Hoccleve ‘revival’ that I would invite a re-examination of Hoccleve's ‘Letter of Cupid.’ But poems are historical as well as literary documents, and while no amount of ‘re-examination’ is likely to transform Hoccleve into a major poet on the basis of the ‘Letter,’ a close look at that piece can perhaps reveal him as a clever and articulate witness to the literary fortunes of a greater poet...