SOURCE: Greetham, D. C. “Self-Referential Artifacts: Hoccleve's Persona as a Literary Device.” Modern Philology 86, no. 3 (1989): 242-51.

In the essay below, Greetham places Hoccleve between Chaucer and Robert Burton (author of Anatomy of Melancholy) on a continuum extending from medieval writers to post-modern authors like John Fowles and Woody Allen. Comparing Hoccleve to both earlier and later authors, Greetham argues that Hoccleve could be fruitfully considered a Menippean satirist in the tradition of Boethius.

Until very recently, we took Thomas Hoccleve at his word. When he claimed to have “lewde speche” and “yonge konynge,”¹ C. S. Lewis agreed.² When he accused himself of “meetrynge amis” on account of his poor eyesight,³ H. C. Schulz readily concurred.⁴ When he insisted that he was “but a repertour / of folkes tales,”⁵ and greatly indebted to his sources, H. S. Bennett merely nodded without further investigation.⁶ And when he characterized himself as an...