Performing Manuscript Culture: Poetry, Materiality, and Authorship in Thomas Hoccleve’s "Regement of Princes" 9783110523089, 9783110522457

Table of contents :
Acknowledgments
Contents
Abbreviations
1 Introduction: the Regement of Princes as a Manuscript Fiction
1.1 The Regement of Princes and its Manuscripts
1.2 A Poet’s Rehabilitation?
1.3 Material Philology Meets Performativity
1.4 Tracing Performances of Manuscript Culture
2 “Hoccleve, fadir myn, men clepen me”: Textual Biography in the Regement of Princes
Thomas Hoccleve, “Scoller of Geoffrey Chaucer”
2.1 Interwoven Biographies
2.2 The Death of the Narrator: Thomas Hoccleve’s Dissolution into his Text
2.3 The Old Man – a Young Narrator, a Potential Future, and a Personified Textual Function
3 “That text I undirstonde thus alwey”: Glosinge in the Regement of Princes
On Authority
3.1 Case Study I: Marginal Glosses and their Relation to the Main Text
3.1.1 Marginal Glosses in the Regement of Princes
3.1.2 Reading Blyth’s and Furnivall’s Regements
3.1.4 Reading the Regement in 15th-Century Witnesses
3.1.5 Commenting on a Culture of Glossing
3.2 Case Study II: Interpreting Authorities
3.2.1 Glossing and Debating Female Maistrie
3.2.2 Alisoun Revisited
3.2.3 Circularity and the Limits of Exegesis
3.2.4 Political Implications of the Practice of Glosinge
4 “Of his persone, I have heere his liknesse Do make”: Mediality and Conceptions of Authorship in the Regement of Princes
Some Thoughts on the Concepts ‘Text’ and ‘Image’
The Manuscripts of the Regement as Canvas
4.1 The Textual Construction Workers: Visualising the Manuscript Context
4.2 Chaucer Pointing at the Regement: A Number of Pictorial Variants
4.3 A Portrait of the Author as …
4.3.1 … Clerkly Chaucer
4.3.2 … Courtly Hoccleve
4.3.3 The Presentation Picture in Arundel 38
4.3.4 The Presentation Picture in Royal 17 D. vi
4.3.5 The Regement’s Cultural Programme of Depicting Authorship
4.4 On Authorship
5 Conclusions
Works Cited
Primary Sources
Secondary Sources
Images
Indices
Index of Names
Index of Manuscripts

Citation preview

Elisabeth Kempf Performing Manuscript Culture

Trends in Medieval Philology

Edited by Ingrid Kasten, Niklaus Largier and Mireille Schnyder Editorial Board Ingrid Bennewitz, John Greenfield, Christian Kiening, Theo Kobusch, Peter von Moos, Uta Störmer-Caysa

Volume 33

Elisabeth Kempf

Performing Manuscript Culture Poetry, Materiality, and Authorship in Thomas Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes

Zugl. Diss. Freie Universität Berlin

ISBN 978-3-11-052245-7 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-052308-9 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-052258-7 ISSN 1612-443X Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.dnb.de abrufbar. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Druck und Bindung: CPI books GmbH, Leck ♾ Gedruckt auf säurefreiem Papier Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgments This book is based on my doctoral dissertation, which I defended on December 17, 2014 at the Freie Universität Berlin. A number of people were vital for this project coming to such a happy ending. First and foremost, I must thank Prof. Andrew James Johnston, who made me junior lecturer and researcher at the Institute for English Philology at the Freie Universität and thus gave me the chance to read, think, teach, and grow for six years. More importantly, he supervised my dissertation with both patience and diligence. Prof. Wolfram Keller at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin became my second supervisor only towards the end of my time as doctoral candidate. Nevertheless, his advice and feedback were valuable. This book benefits greatly from suggestions and corrections made by both Prof. Johnston and Prof. Keller. I am indebted to Prof. Wendy Scase at the University of Birmingham, who introduced me to manuscript studies and, in a way, predetermined my later research. I thank Prof. Ingrid Kasten, Prof. Niklaus Largier and Prof. Mireille Schnyder for giving this book a home in their series Trends in Medieval Philology. At De Gruyter, Dr. Jacob Klingner, Maria Zucker and Jens Lindenhain have organized the publication of this book both swiftly and expertly, for which I am grateful. Colleagues and friends at the Freie Universität listened to my ideas, supported or opposed them, and read chapter drafts: Sven Durie was an important partner in developing and constantly reassesing the topic of my thesis. Heartfelt thanks go to Dr. Maggie Rouse and Dr. Kai Wiegandt for showing me how one writes and, more importantly, finishes writing a dissertation. Lukas Lammers and Dr. Tilo Renz were especially important in the final stages of writing up the thesis. More than six years of working on a doctoral dissertation and preparing it for publication are impossible without an (extra‐)academic network. Dr. Anja-Simone Michalski, both friend and colleague, has happily given advice and support on matters related and unrelated to the publication process. Dr. Michael Rush and Dr. Emily Rozier, favourite fellow medievalist and road-trippers, will always be my place of escape. For more than 15 years, Kristina Schulz has never failed either to suffer or to celebrate with me, depending on the occasion – thank you! I am happy to have a family who has always believed that I could do anything, showing the right level of interest without raising too much pressure. This book is dedicated to my parents, Angelika Kempf and Enno Kempf, who have been a source of unfailing trust. Without them, this work, my thesis in its material im- and expression, would never have come into being. Berlin, September 2016

Contents Acknowledgments Abbreviations

V IX

 Introduction: the Regement of Princes as a Manuscript Fiction . The Regement of Princes and its Manuscripts 3 . A Poet’s Rehabilitation? 8 . Material Philology Meets Performativity 11 21 . Tracing Performances of Manuscript Culture

1



“Hoccleve, fadir myn, men clepen me”: Textual Biography in the Regement of Princes 23 Thomas Hoccleve, “Scoller of Geoffrey Chaucer” 23 . Interwoven Biographies 33 . The Death of the Narrator: Thomas Hoccleve’s Dissolution into his 44 Text . The Old Man – a Young Narrator, a Potential Future, and a Personified 49 Textual Function 

“That text I undirstonde thus alwey”: Glosinge in the Regement of Princes 57 62 On Authority . Case Study I: Marginal Glosses and their Relation to the Main Text 71 .. Marginal Glosses in the Regement of Princes 71 .. Reading Blyth’s and Furnivall’s Regements 75 .. Reading the Regement in 15th-Century Witnesses 85 .. Commenting on a Culture of Glossing 87 . Case Study II: Interpreting Authorities 89 .. Glossing and Debating Female Maistrie 90 .. Alisoun Revisited 97 .. Circularity and the Limits of Exegesis 101 .. Political Implications of the Practice of Glosinge 104

VIII

Contents



“Of his persone, I have heere his liknesse Do make”: Mediality and 107 Conceptions of Authorship in the Regement of Princes Some Thoughts on the Concepts ‘Text’ and ‘Image’ 111 The Manuscripts of the Regement as Canvas 115 . The Textual Construction Workers: Visualising the Manuscript 118 Context . Chaucer Pointing at the Regement: A Number of Pictorial Variants 126 . A Portrait of the Author as … 138 .. … Clerkly Chaucer 138 151 .. … Courtly Hoccleve .. The Presentation Picture in Arundel 38 159 .. The Presentation Picture in Royal 17 D. vi 163 166 .. The Regement’s Cultural Programme of Depicting Authorship . On Authorship 170 

Conclusions

179

Works Cited 186 Primary Sources 186 187 Secondary Sources Images

198

Indices 205 Index of Names 205 Index of Manuscripts 207

Abbreviations The following manuscripts of the Regement of Princes are discussed throughout this study. For the sake of readability, their shelf marks are abbreviated. London British Library British Library British Library British Library British Library British Library British Library British Library

MS MS MS MS MS MS MS MS

Additional  Arundel  Harley  Harley  Harley  Harley  Royal  D. vi Royal  D. xviii

Additional  Arundel  Harley  Harley  Harley  Harley  Royal  D. vi Royal  D. xviii

Cambridge The Queens’ College MS  University Library MS Gg. vi.  Fitzwilliam Museum MS McClean  Fitzwilliam Museum MS McClean 

Queens’  University Library Gg. vi.  McClean  McClean 

Oxford Bodleian Bodleian Bodleian Bodleian Bodleian Bodleian Bodleian Bodleian

Ashmole  Bodley  Digby  Douce  Dugdale  Laud Misc.  Rawlinson poet.  Selden Supra 

Library Library Library Library Library Library Library Library

MS MS MS MS MS MS MS MS

Ashmole  Bodley  Digby  Douce  Dugdale  Laud Misc.  Rawlinson poet.  Selden Supra 

Others Yale University, Beinecke Library MS  Philadelphia, PA, Rosenbach Foundation, MS /

Beinecke  Rosenbach

1 Introduction: the Regement of Princes as a Manuscript Fiction “Fadir, yee may lawhe at my lewde speeche, If that yow list – I am nothyng fourmeel; My yong konnynge may no hyer reeche; My wit is also slipir as an eel. But how I speke, algate I meene weel.”¹ “We wish he had been a better poet and a manlier fellow; but all of those who’ve made fools of themselves, more or less, in their youth, will feel for the poor old versifier.”²

In the prologue to the Regement of Princes the narrator, a scribe at the Privy Seal Office named Thomas Hoccleve, complains about his lack of potential as a writer (see quote 1 above). He bemoans the fact that he cannot write in Latin, nor French, nor English, that he is not learned enough, and that his “wit is also slipir as an eel.” In fact, the narrator complains a great deal and not only about his “yong konnynge”, but about a number of things: his financial state, the way young people dress at the time, the lack of respect for retired soldiers of the Hundred Years’ War, his working conditions at the Privy Seal Office, his age, the world in general, and much more.³ One of his favourite complaints in the Regement, however, is his bad performance as an author. Frederick J. Furnivall, late 19th-century editor of the works of the historical figure Thomas Hoccleve (ca. 1367– 1426),⁴ rates the author’s abilities as rather bad (see quote 2 above)

 Thomas Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ed. by Charles R. Blyth (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1999), ll. 1982– 1986. All quotations from the Regement of Princes, unless stated otherwise, come from this source.  Frederick J. Furnivall, “Forewords,” in Hoccleve’s Works: The Regement of Princes and Fourteen Minor Poems, ed. by Frederick J. Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1897), p. xxxviii.  John Burrow goes as far as calling Hoccleve “our first chronicler of private worries – an ancestor, perhaps, of Charles Lamb and Philip Larkin.” John A. Burrow, “Hoccleve’s Series: Experience and Books,” in Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays, ed. by Robert F. Yeager. (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1984), p. 268.  Both empirical author and narrator are called Thomas Hoccleve. This creates the potential for complication and confusion in my study. Still, I choose not to introduce different names or abbreviations for the two Hoccleves. Instead, I will always clarify whether my discussion revolves around Hoccleve the author or the narrator. Even the denomination “author”, however, does not always make the matter easier, as the narrator at the end of the Regement’s prologue becomes the intra-textual author of the main part, the Regement proper. Careful labelling will hence be vital throughout this study. DOI 10.1515/9783110523089-001

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– and bases his opinion on the narrator’s self-judgement as pronounced, for example, in quote 1. This is the crux of Hoccleve’s texts: the Series, the Regement of Princes, as well as his other works create a persona Thomas Hoccleve whose life seems to resemble the life of the empirical author Thomas Hoccleve to such a degree that for scholars like Furnivall, the narrator persona and the historical author merge into one person.⁵ One could say, then, that Furnivall fell prey to a trap that Hoccleve’s texts bait: he took the narrator’s words at face value and believed that his self-critique was that of the actual author Thomas Hoccleve. This persona Thomas Hoccleve has been studied and evaluated extensively: his mental state, his age, his poverty, his stance on women, his constant moaning and his work as a scribe of the Privy Seal Office have been of interest to a number of scholars. This study, too, will take a closer look at the persona as it is created in the Regement of Princes. I will, however, argue in favour of a strict division between the empirical Hoccleve, author of the Regement and other works, and the narrator Hoccleve, a fictional character within the texts.⁶ What is more, I will maintain that this narrator persona is carefully crafted not only as a ficticious doppelgänger to the author, but also as one expression of the Regement’s performativity. The Regement, as I will argue, is essentially a performative text. It performs not only the creation and life of a narrator persona that seems to mirror that of its author. On a larger scale, I will aim to show that the text expresses, in a performative way, its awareness of the manuscript culture it is so firmly rooted in. The openness of manuscripts is a recurring and underlying subject in the Regement, a subject that is not only expressed through mere descriptions, but rather through complex, sometimes hidden, references to the manuscript context. This is why I maintain that the Regement of Princes can be called a manuscript fiction. Performances of manuscript culture manifest themselves in several aspects of the text. The narrator persona is only one level on which this effect can be traced, and it is not merely the creation of this persona that matters here, but also the question of how persona and text are intertwined (this aspect will be  On the biography of the historical Thomas Hoccleve, see H. C. Schulz, “Thomas Hoccleve, Scribe,” Speculum 12 (1937): pp. 71– 81; Jerome A. Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic (Urbana, IL, et al.: University of Illinois Press, 1968); John A. Burrow, Thomas Hoccleve (Aldershot: Variorum, 1994); Linne R. Mooney, “Some New Light on Thomas Hoccleve,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007): pp. 293 – 340; Linne R. Mooney, “A Holograph Copy of Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011): pp. 263 – 296; Sheila Lindenbaum, “Thomas Hoccleve,” in A Companion to Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. by Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 35 – 47.  See footnote 4 above.

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the content of further discussion in Chapter 2). Studying the performative elements in this late and most popular work written by the empirical Thomas Hoccleve, three aspects will be taken into focus: The first is the autobiographical accounts of the narrator’s life. The second is the constantly recurring interpretation of quotes from authoritative sources that pervades the Regement. This urge to interpret is expressed both in the tradition of adding marginal glosses and in the process of glosinge, or in other words of subjecting the text to an exegetical reading. Both instances of glosinge, I will argue, present the Regement as an inherently open text. The third aspect is the relation between text and images in the Regement’s manuscripts. Studying this relation will show how mediality is performed in medieval manuscripts, and, more importantly, how the manuscript context is made the focus of this performance. All of these three aspects, autobiographical fiction, exegesis, and mediality, I will argue, can be grasped and studied with the concept of performativity which is further expanded by the postulations of the Material Philology.

1.1 The Regement of Princes and its Manuscripts The Regement of Princes, written between 1411 and 1413 by Thomas Hoccleve, is a Fürstenspiegel that owes much of its structure and content to this long tradition of didactic literature.⁷ The text’s proclaimed aim is to counsel its addressee, Prince Henry, the future Henry V, on how to become a good king. In a wider sense, the Regement, like all Fürstenspiegel texts, aims at a broader audience, “teaching proper governance to anyone interested in learning better personal, social, and spiritual behaviour”.⁸ While the Regement shows traces of many other genres, like moral lament (its beginning resembles that of Boethius’s Consolatio), dream visions, debate literature and confessional texts, it is firmly rooted in the Fürstenspiegel- or speculum regis-genre.⁹ The genre looks back on a long, mostly Latin, tradition in  A more extensive introduction to the Regement, its structure and historical background can be found in, for example, Charles Blyth’s introduction to his 1999 edition of the text: Charles R. Blyth, “Introduction,” in Thomas Hoccleve: The Regiment of Princes, ed. by Charles R. Blyth (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1999), pp. 1– 27.  David Lorenzo Boyd, “Reading Through the Regiment of Princes: Hoccleve’s Series and Lydgate’s Dance of Death in Yale Beinecke MS 493,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 20 (1993): p. 18.  Judith Ferster studies the tensions that arise from the Regement combining several genres and especially the combination of begging poem and counsel literature: Judith Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 139 – 147.

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1 Introduction: the Regement of Princes as a Manuscript Fiction

which inter-textual relations are closely knit. The Regement, for example, is based on and includes parts of three older texts: the Secreta Secretorum, an alleged letter of Aristotle to Alexander the Great; the De regimine principum by Egidius Romanus (c. 1247– 1316); and the Chessbook written by Jacob de Cessolis. Joel Snyder offers a one-sentence definition of the genre that describes the texts’ function: “With few exceptions, these texts are exemplary, joining instruction in politics to ethical and religious guidance.”¹⁰ But it is not only in terms of function that the Regement follows genre patterns (at least at first glance): Hoccleve’s text follows the genre structurally, too.¹¹ Its main part features fifteen chapters that are often referred to as the ‘Regement proper’. ¹² In every one of these chapters, one particular virtue or vice are dwelt on, with exempla showing how to eschew this vice or reinforce the virtue. Depending on the particular content, the sections are called “De patiencia” or “De pace”. It is the Regement’s extensive prologue, however, that fascinates scholars most, both due to its length, but also because of its autobiographical contents. Of a total of 5463 lines, the first 2016 lines consist of a lively dialogue between the narrator Thomas Hoccleve and the Old Man, who remains nameless throughout the text. In the beginning of the prologue, the narrator describes how financial worries and the fear of a future as a poor man kept him awake all night long. At the end of this sleepless night, he takes to walking around in a sleep-like state. On his walk, he meets the Old Man, a figure of wisdom, who listens to his worries. During his conversation with the Old Man, the narrator reveals a number of details of his life: his work at the Privy Seal Office, his marriage, his living arrangements, etc. At the end of the prologue the Old Man gives the narrator the advice to write a didactic text and dedicate it to Prince Henry,

 Joel Snyder, “Las Meninas and the Mirror of the Prince,” Critical Inquiry 11:4 (1985): pp. 557– 558. More comprehensive studies of the Fürstenspiegel-genre are: Wilhelm Berges, Die Fürstenspiegel des Hohen und Späten Mittelalters, Monumenta Germaniae Historica Schriften II (Stuttgart: Hiersemann Verlag, 1938); Wilhelm Kleineke, Englische Fürstenspiegel vom Policraticus Johanns von Salisbury bis zum Basilikon Doron König Jakobs I. (Halle/Saale: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1937).  All of the Regement’s source texts follow a particular structure: the Chessbook is divided into chapters describing the figurines of a chesspiece; the Secretum Secretorum in most of its vernacular versions features the same heading-structure as the Regement with chapter headings such as “Of the soule”, “Of kynges discrecion” etc.: Jacob de Cessolis, The Book of Chess, ed. by H. L. Williams, trans. by H. L. Williams (New York: Italica Press, 2008); Secretum Secretorum: Nine English Versions, Early English Text Society, ed. by M. A. Manzalaoui (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977).  Some studies refer to fourteen sections, others to fifteen. The sections are no always clearly marked as separate entities, which complicates the count.

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who is meant to alleviate the narrator’s financial situation in return. The narrator resolves to sit down and write a mirror for princes, the Regement proper, which starts out with 140 lines of “Words of the Compiler to the Prince”. The prologue to the Regement of Princes is thus remarkably long, taking up thirty-seven percent of the whole text.¹³ Many readers and scribes conceived of the two parts as two separate units, a fact that is supported by manuscript evidence: Harley 7333, for example, contains only the prologue to the Regement proper, while Rawlinson poet. 168 leaves out the prologue and only features the main part. And in those manuscripts that contain both parts, many scribes still seem to have been confused about how to label them. At times, the heading “prologus” precedes what I call the prologue (hence, the first 2016 lines), sometimes the same heading refers to the “Words of the Compiler to the Prince”. The prologue is left without any heading in some manuscripts and is called the “Dialogue” in others. Some scholars even maintain that prologue and main part should be considered two different texts.¹⁴ But despite these confusions as to how exactly the two parts relate to one another, and even though the prologue is a much more lively narrative than the Regement proper, I would still argue that prologue and main part form one greater entity: while following and developing its plot, the prologue repeatedly lays open that it has the same function as an exemplum. Arguing along the same lines, Anna Torti states that “[t]he mirror of Hoccleve’s life (which is also reflected in the tale of the Beggar’s life) is joined to the mirror of the prince’s

 As A. C. Spearing puts it: “Scholars have had difficultuy in explaining the preamble’s length”: A. C. Spearing, Medieval Autographies: The “I” of the Text (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), p. 137. Spearing then attempts to explain the purpose of the prologue in relation to the whole Regement. Andrew James Johnston, in a different context, observes a possible reason for the slightly unconventional ratio: “In imitating the Chaucer of the Canterbury Tales, who keeps drawing attention to the artistry of his production while embedding it in the realism of the road-side, Hoccleve is, ultimately, distancing himself from the clerkly instrumentalisation of literature his Regement would otherwise have become. This also explains the imbalanced relationship between the prologue and the Regement-proper”, Andrew James Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 2001), p. 285.  Wilhelm Kleineke, for example, calls the prologue “a self-contained work of art that seems to have little to do with the main part.” (“ein in sich geschlossenes kleines Kunstwerk […], das mit dem Fürstenspiegel des Hauptteils scheinbar wenig zu tun hat”, my translation), Kleineke, Englische Fürstenspiegel vom Policraticus Johanns von Salisbury bis zum Basilikon Doron König Jakobs I., p. 114. For the sake of convention, I will stick to the terms prologue and main part or Regement proper.

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life (for which the histories of the powerful are the image).”¹⁵ In the prologue, the desperate and confused narrator is in a state of obtuseness, almost asleep, when he first meets the Old Man (“He stirte unto me and seide, “Sleepstow, man? / Awake!” and gan me shake wondir faste”).¹⁶ In their discussion, the Old Man wants to convince the narrator to follow his advice. For this purpose, he repeatedly tells him stories similar to exempla, for example of his own youth. In the end, he succeeds and the narrator accepts his advice. As a whole, the prologue can be read as a successful instance of counselling: a man in need of help meets a counsellor, gets and accepts a piece of advice, and puts it into action. Nicholas Perkins supports this when he describes the prologue as “a lesson for Prince Henry in how to read the poem that follows.”¹⁷ Recent research discusses the genre’s function more critically than earlier scholars have done. The exempla found in mirrors for princes are usually said to serve the purpose of proving a point, showing either how people in history behaved viciously or, in positive cases, virtuously. Like in the Regement, exempla stories were stringed together, often without transitions or without explaining how particular exempla were to be understood. This resulted in texts with a strong compilatory character. In addition, new texts written in the genre were influenced by older texts, to the following result: “The mirrors for princes are encyclopedic in nature and widely distributed geographically and temporally, and since many translators and editors added and subtracted material as they pleased, the works gathered contradictory accretions.”¹⁸ It could be these “contradictory accretions” that contest the genre’s claim to offer clear-cut authoritative advice. Judith Ferster studies the tradition and later versions of the Secreta Secretorum. She shows in how far the texts claim to support “the ideology of advice” but at the same time allow “for the ideology to be undermined”.¹⁹ Andrew James Johnston goes further in his evaluation of the Regement – and indeed of the whole genre: “[M]ost of the actual advice given to the prince is so conventional, general and moralistic as to be practically worthless when it comes to the question of how to apply it in a given situation.”²⁰ The question of applica Anna Torti, The Glass of Form: Mirroring Structures from Chaucer to Skelton (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991), p. 104.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 131– 132.  Nicholas Perkins, Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint (Oxford: Brewer, 2001), p. 82.  Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England, p. 40.  Ibid.  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 295.

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bility in relation to the Regement’s openly communicated didactic function will also be addressed in this study. The Regement survives in forty-six manuscripts and its manuscript situation poses somewhat of a riddle for scholars.²¹ On the one hand, the forty-six surviving manuscripts and fragments bear witnesses to a certain popularity. Hardly any other Middle English verse text survives in such a large tradition. On the other hand, Marcia Smith Marzec remarks, all manuscripts “are fifteenth-century copies and nearly all represent a southeast midlands scribal dialect”, so that “the transmission of the text seems to have been chronologically and geographically limited.”²² And in addition, no early printed version of the Regement survives. The earliest printed edition is the edition by Thomas Wright in 1860.²³ The overall picture suggests a relatively short but great popularity in the 15th century, with a decrease in popularity that was not only comparably great, but also rapid.

 Of these fourty-six witnesses, three are fragments and extracts. For the most recent complete list, see Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, eds., A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: The British Library, 2005), p. 149 (entry 2229). Michael Seymour offers a catalogue of the fourtythree manuscripts that hold the complete or almost complete text: Michael C. Seymour, “Manuscripts of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 4:7 (1974): pp. 253 – 297. A. S. G. Edwards supplies the description of Beinecke 493, which is missing in Seymour’s list: A. S. G. Edwards, “Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes: A Further Manuscript,” Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions 5 (1978): p. 32. And two fragments of an additional manuscripts are discussed by Richard Firth Green: Richard Firth Green, “Notes on Some MSS of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” The British Library Journal 4 (1978): pp. 37– 41. For a very recent description of the stanza markers in the two earliest copies of the text, see Aditi Nafde, “Stanza Markers in MSS Arundel 38 and Harley 4866 of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” Notes and Queries 61:259 (2014): pp. 15 – 18.  Marcia Smith Marzec, “The Latin Marginalia of the Regiment of Princes as an Aid to Stemmatic Analysis,” Text 3 (1987): p. 269.  This edition is the first of three. It seems as if it was neither spread nor read widely. It is based on one manuscript, Royal 17 D. vi, from the middle of the 15th century. The second, much more widely received, edition was published in 1897 on behalf of the Early English Text Society. The editor Frederick J. Furnivall based his work on one of the two earliest manuscripts: Harley 4866. The third edition is Charley Blyth’s 1999 edition for TEAMS (Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages). Blyth chose to edit the other of the two early copies, Arundel 38, supplementing it with Harley 4866 whenever necessary.

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1.2 A Poet’s Rehabilitation? “Thomas Hoccleve has undergone a lot of rehabilitation lately.”²⁴ These are the words of Sarah Tolmie who evaluates how researchers’ stances towards Hoccleve’s works have changed over the decades (at the same time alluding to the famous mental breakdown the persona Hoccleve refers to in the Series). And indeed, early studies of Hoccleve largely ignored the literariness of his texts. The reason for this might have been that many scholars, similar to Frederick J. Furnivall (see quote 2 on page 1 above), considered Thomas Hoccleve’s literary work to be of minor artistic value.²⁵ But while literary scholars remained mostly inactive with regards to Hoccleve’s literature, historians did give his texts their attention and used them to draw conclusions about the historical reality of late-medieval government clerks and about the networks of London scribes who copied the works of Gower, Chaucer and Lydgate.²⁶

 Sarah Tolmie, “The Professional: Thomas Hoccleve,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007): pp. 341– 342. Her positive judgement is qualified immediately, however, when her thought runs on: “Yet his specific status as a writer of poetry has remained secondary in much recent criticism: the poet has become a prisoner of context, administrative, political, or cultural.”  Next to the prefatory quote by Furnivall, one evaluation of Hoccleve’s poetic style will be enough to exemplify the opinions uttered by most earlier scholars: Derek Pearsall describes Hoccleve’s verses and metres and comes to the conclusion that “[t]o call it a simple style would be the compliment that Hoccleve’s skill deserves.” Derek Pearsall, “The English Chaucerians,” in Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature, ed. by D. S. Brewer (London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1966), p. 224.  Historians’ interest can be explained through the Formulary, a book written and compiled by Thomas Hoccleve containing model letters for a clerk’s daily work at the Privy Seal Office (London, British Library Additional MS 24062). The most important studies which draw on the life and works of Thomas Hoccleve are: Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic; A. Compton Reeves, “Thomas Hoccleve, Bureaucrat,” Medievalia et Humanistica: Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Culture New Series, Number 5 (1974): pp. 201– 214; Malcolm Richardson, “Hoccleve in His Social Context,” The Chaucer Review 20:4 (1986): pp. 313 – 322; Schulz, “Thomas Hoccleve, Scribe”; Thomas Frederick Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England, vol. V: The Wardrobe, The Chamber and the Small Seals (Manchester: At the University Press, 1930); William Matthews, “Thomas Hoccleve,” in A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050 – 1500, ed. by Albert E. Hartung (New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1972); A. I. Doyle, and M. B. Parkes, “The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century,” in Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts, and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker, ed. by M. B. Parkes and A. G. Watson (London: Scholar Press, 1978); Burrow, Thomas Hoccleve.

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In the 1980s, literary scholars have begun to see Hoccleve and his works in a more differentiated way.²⁷ John A. Burrow was among the first scholars to give the Regement and other Hocclevean text more credit. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, he published a number of studies on Hoccleve as well as an edition of his Dialogue and Series. While Hoccleve is only briefly mentioned in Burrow’s 1981 essay “The Poet as Petitioner”,²⁸ already one year later one of his lectures for the British Academy (published in 1983) focused entirely on the “Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve”.²⁹ Several publications followed, all focusing on various aspects of Hoccleve’s oeuvre. ³⁰ Also in the late 1980s, David Lawton published his seminal essay on dullness in the 15th century. In his summary of scholarship on Chaucer’s successors he maintains that researchers have for a long time seen 15th-century Chaucerians as “reverse alchemists transmuting Chaucerian gold into Lydgatean lead.”³¹ Lawton works against this presumption and argues that Chaucer’s successors, particularly Hoccleve, deserve more attention than has long been offered. His opinion about Hoccleve’s autobiographical mode is especially positive: “We now see him as the first modern English poet, beached on the existential foreshore between death and overdraft.”³² Ethan Knapp’s monograph The Bureaucratic Muse is, after Jerome Mitchell’s 1968 book,³³ the first to solely focus on Thomas Hoccleve.³⁴ He is also among the first scholars to submit Hoc-

 This is not only testified to by a higher number in research literature, but also in a new wave of editions. After the 1970 revised edition of Furnivall’s EETS editions, scholars have started editing Hoccleve’s text anew in the 1980s: Thomas Hoccleve, Selections from Hoccleve, ed. by Michael C. Seymour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1981); Thomas Hoccleve, Thomas Hoccleve’s Complaint and Dialogue, ed. by J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes; Thomas Hoccleve, My Compleinte and Other Poems, ed. by Roger Ellis (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001).  John A. Burrow, “The Poet as Petitioner,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): pp. 61– 75.  John A. Burrow, “Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve. Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture,” Proceedings of the British Academy 1982 LXVIII (1983): pp. 389 – 411.  Burrow, “Hoccleve’s Series: Experience and Books”; John A. Burrow, “Hoccleve and Chaucer,” in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, ed. by Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 54– 61; Burrow, Thomas Hoccleve; John A. Burrow, “Thomas Hoccleve: Some Redatings,” Review of English Studies 46 (1995): pp. 366 – 372; Hoccleve, Thomas Hoccleve’s Complaint and Dialogue.  David Lawton, “Dullness and the Fifteenth Century,” ELH 54:4 (1987): p. 761.  Ibid., p. 763.  Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic.  Ethan Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England (Philadelphia, PA: Pennsylvania University Press, 2001).

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cleve’s works to a close reading that does not aim at establishing their author’s biography, but rather to trace the constraints of the bureaucratic apparatus in Hoccleve’s texts and study their interrelation with a socio-political development prevalent at the time of the Regement’s creation. Knapp’s work informs this book a great deal, both with regard to his theoretical perspective as well as to some of his close readings of the Regement. A second monograph published in 2001, Nicholas Perkins’ study examines how in the Regement of Princes Thomas Hoccleve deals with the complicated combination of different roles: adviser of a future king, author of a complaint, and petitioner for money.³⁵ Judith Ferster’s monograph studies a wider corpus of Fürstenspiegel-texts and offers critical readings of single exempla. Ferster shows how in the Regement, the combination of Middle English main text and Latin glosses offers a reading that is everything but straightforward.³⁶ One of the most recent publications on Hoccleve, Lee Patterson’s 2010 essay, goes a step further in rehabilitating the poet by extricating him from the constraints of positivism and conventionalism. Patterson argues that Hoccleve’s interest in his own person is “less a strategy directed to some larger literary goal than the goal itself.”³⁷ A large number of other studies on Thomas Hoccleve and his works have been published. The books and essays named here are the ones that have informed my own study most. They have helped me position my own research and have given me a starting point.

 Perkins, Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint. Perkins’ “Introduction” (pages 1– 4) offers an impressive overview of recent Hoccleve studies. In the last decades, a group of studies next to Perkins’ have focussed on the intersection of Hoccleve’s poetry with Lancastrian politics and political ideology: Larry Scanlon, “The King’s Two Voices: Narrative and Power in Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes,” in Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380 – 1530, ed. by Lee Patterson (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1990), pp. 216 – 247; Larry Scanlon, “Nothing but Change and Variance: The Problem of Hoccleve’s Politics,” The Chaucer Review 48:4 (2014): pp. 504– 523; James Simpson, “Nobody’s Man: Thomas Hoccleve’s “Regement of Princes”,” in London and Europe in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by Julia Boffey and Pamela King (London: Centre of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1995), pp. 149 – 181; Paul Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation, 1399 – 1422 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1998), esp. pp. 141– 148 and pp. 180 – 195; Paul Strohm, “Hoccleve, Lydgate and the Lancastrian Court,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. by David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 640 – 661.  Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England, esp. chapter 8, pp. 137– 159.  Lee Patterson, “”What is me?”: Hoccleve and the Trials of the Urban Self,” in Acts of Recognition: Essays on Medieval Culture (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010), p. 86.

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1.3 Material Philology Meets Performativity The basic premises of my work are those of the New Historicism. The Annaleshistorian Roger Chartier, whose research influenced and formed New Historicism at its outset, sees all texts as embedded in their contemporary cultures. This embeddedness is complex and intertwined with questions of authority, historical circumstances, readership, etc.: “In contrast to the representation of the ideal, abstract text – which is stable because it is detached from materiality, a representation elaborated by literature itself – it is essential to remember that no text exists outside of the support that enables it to be read; any comprehension of a writing, no matter what kind it is, depends on the forms in which it reaches its reader.”³⁸ While Chartier’s statement pertains to 16th-century printed texts, its all-encompassing nature makes it just as fitting for texts based in the manuscript culture of the previous centuries. Whenever perceptions of literature and textuality throughout time have been discussed, the antagonistic pair of the medieval open vs. the modern closed text has been a standard differentiation. What is more, the binarity of open vs. closed has been supplemented with other qualities: instable vs. stable, premodern vs. modern, copied by hand vs. printed, and so on. Even if scholars try to eschew overly simplified categorizations, it cannot be denied that when it comes to the possibility of interfering with and changing a literary text, modern and medieval attitudes seem to have differed considerably. And, as so often when it comes to the medieval-modern-divide, the rise of the printing press seems to play the pivotal role in scholarly discussions. Gerald L. Bruns, for example, maintains that “[p]rint closes off the act of writing and authorizes its result.”³⁹ Manuscript culture, in contrast, produces open texts. Roger Ellis reminds us that “the status – the very idea – of a text in a preprint culture is much more fluid, and more obviously fluid, than that of a printed text. […] Consequently, we need to see a Hoccleve poem not so much as a finished product, […] but more as a snapshot of an on-going literary process.”⁴⁰ But

 Roger Chartier, “Texts, Printing, Readings,” in The New Cultural History, ed. by Lynn Hunt (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1989), p. 161.  Gerald L. Bruns, “The Originality of Texts in a Manuscript Culture,” Comparative Literature 32:2 (1980): p. 113. There is, of course, the possibility of a revised edition, which re-opens the act of writing. Bruns is aware of this re-opening, however, and maintains that while it is a complicated process, it is still a process that involves authorisation and, ultimately, closure after the revision. Manuscript texts, in contrast, remain eternally open.  Roger Ellis, “Introduction,” in My Compleinte and Other Poems, ed. by Roger Ellis (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2001), p. 12.

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while the invention of printing is attributed with the power to close texts and to fix them in their authorial, original state, it seems to be more than just the absence of printing that makes medieval texts such open entities. This is what Ellis’s quote above seems to suggest: that underlying the openness of medieval texts is not only the fact that they are copied by hand, but also a different “idea of a text”. This openness of medieval texts is one of the key features discussed in the works of Material Philologists. In 1990, Stephen Nichols edited a special issue of Speculum and wrote an introductory article on what came to be known as the ‘New Philology’.⁴¹ Seven years later, in his 1997 essay “Why Material Philology?” he chose ‘Material Philology’ as a preferable name for the school of thought. Being one of the most fervent advocates of Material Philology, Nichols argues that it is the manuscript rather than the edition that should be the starting point of every study of medieval literature: “Material philology takes as its point of departure the premise that one should study or theorize medieval literature by reinserting it directly into the vif of its historical context by privileging the material artifact(s) that convey this literature to us: the manuscript.”⁴² The manuscript, or ‘manuscript matrix’, as Nichols calls it, designates a “space of radical alterity very different from the conception of textual space propounded by the critical edition.”⁴³ The manuscript format is, according to Nichols, determined by two basic features, as it is “both multivoiced and temporally openended”.⁴⁴ Multivocality, the first of the two features, is constituted through the different elements that fill the manuscript matrix and that act as supplementations to the text: scribal recension, rubrication, decoration, illumination and others. These elements enter into different relations to the main text and thus act as different voices on a manuscript page. Significantly, these supplementations were not only provided at the time of manuscript production, which hardly ever coincides with the composition of the text itself, but were added continuously as the manuscript was handed from owner to owner. Illustrations or illuminated initials were mostly – but not always – painted shortly after the copying of the text, but commentaries or alterations could be added at a later stage by a

 Stephen G. Nichols, “Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65:1 (1990): pp. 1– 10.  Stephen G. Nichols, “Why Material Philology?,” Zeitschift für Deutsche Philologie 116:(Sonderheft Philologie als Textwissenschaft – Alte und Neue Horizonte) (1997): pp. 10 – 11.  Stephen G. Nichols, “Philology and Its Discontents,” in The Future of the Middle Ages: Medieval Literature in the 1990s, ed. by William D. Paden (Gainesvillle, FL: University Press of Florida, 1994), p. 119.  Ibid.

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succession of readers.⁴⁵ This is referred to as the open-endedness of a medieval literary text. Nichols and other scholars base their elaborations on Bernard Cerquiglini’s ground-breaking publication In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, which states that “medieval writing does not produce variants; it is variance”.⁴⁶ In shifting scholarly attention from the printed edition to the manuscripts in all their forms, Material Philology seems to be doing away with the concept of authorial intention: Authorial ideas concerning layout, order, and dissemination of texts cannot be reconstructed from manuscripts that change the text and all the other elements as well as their relation to each other over time.⁴⁷ Replacing the author in significance, medieval scribes, illuminators and rubricators as well as each artisan’s performance in each and every manuscript form the objects of study for Material Philologists. Robert S. Sturges’ theory of the polyphonic text argues along the same lines: “If medieval textuality has a center, it is not to be found in the organizing intelligence of the author but in the manuscript itself as a point of intersection.”⁴⁸ What the Material Philology calls multivocality, Sturges refers to as polyphony, and it is especially medieval texts with commentaries, “with their openness to a mulitplicity of sources and authors” that he sees as “precursors of the Bakhtinian polyphonic text”.⁴⁹ The Material Philology encourages diverse areas of research, all of which revolve around the material nature of medieval literary texts. Some studies examine the medieval text in connection to other manuscript elements, focussing on the interplay of, for example, main text and images, glosses, border decorations,

 Ibid., similarly, Carol Symes maintains that “[i]n the manuscript matrix […] no one ever has the last word.”, Carol Symes, “Manuscript Matrix, Modern Canon,” in Middle English, ed. by Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 18.  Bernard Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, trans. by Betsy Wing (Baltimore, MD, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), p. 78. The original line runs: “Or l’écriture médiévale ne produit pas de variantes, elle est variance.” Bernard Cerquiglini, Eloge de la variante: Histoire critique de la philologie (Paris: Le Seuil, 1989), p. 111.  A small number of known autograph manuscripts constitute an exception. Notably, John M. Bowers argues that two manuscripts containing Hocclevean texts are autographs that make it possible for us to understand and reconstruct exactly this kind of authorial intention that normally cannot play a role in medieval literature: John M. Bowers, “Hoccleve’s Huntington Holographs: The First ‘Collected Poems’ in English,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 15 (1989): pp. 27– 51.  I understand the term “intersection” as denoting the intersection of different artisans and persons involved. Robert S. Sturges, “Medieval Authorship and the Polyphonic Text: From Manuscript Commentary to the Modern Novel,” in Bakhtin and Medieval Voices, ed. by Thomas J. Farrell (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 1995), p. 134.  Ibid., p. 123.

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etc.⁵⁰ Others are concerned with an appropriate way of editing medieval texts and analysing their language within a manuscript context.⁵¹ The well-received 1990 special issue of Speculum shows a cross-section of these different approaches. Throughout the 1990s, and into the early 2000s, a number of reactions to, and in some cases critique of, the Material Philology and its premises were voiced. Keith Busby’s collection of essays, Towards a Synthesis? Essays on the New Philology, is quite literally a response first to Bernard Cerquiglini, and second to the 1990 Speculum issue.⁵² But the ideas underlying the Material Philology were not unique to the works of those who considered themselves to be Material Philologists. As Susan Yager states, “many of the tenets of what is now called New Philology [i. e. Material Philology, E.K.] had already been established, among both text editors and social scientists, well before the special issue was published.”⁵³ John Dagenais’s approach, for example, is unrelated to the Material Philology, but still raises strikingly familiar ideas. The scholar of Romance Literature proposes

 While Stephen Nichols focuses very much on the relation between text and images in medieval manuscripts (see various essays like Stephen G. Nichols, “The Light of the Word: Narrative, Image, and Truth,” New Literary History 11:3 (1980): pp. 535 – 544; Stephen G. Nichols, “Picture, Image and Subjectivity in Medieval Culture,” MLN 108 (1993): pp. 617– 637; Nichols, “Philology and Its Discontents.”), Siân Echard studies the glosses and their relation to the main text in the Confessio Amantis: Siân Echard, “With Carmen’s Help: Latin Authorities in the Confessio Amantis,” Studies in Philology 95:1 (1998): pp. 1– 40.  See, for example: David F. Hult, “Reading It Right: The Ideology of Text Editing,” in The New Medievalism, ed. by Marina S. Brownlee, Kevin Brownlee, and Stephen G. Nichols (Baltimore, MD, and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), pp. 113 – 130; Siegfried Wenzel, “Reflections on (New) Philology,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 65:1 (1990): pp. 11– 18; Suzanne Fleischman, “Philology, Linguistics, and the Discourse of the Medieval Text,” Speculum: A Journal of Medieval Studies 65:1 (1990): pp. 19 – 37.  Keith Busby, ed., Towards a Synthesis? Essays on the New Philology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993). Critique of the Material Philology most frequently seems to involve a defence of the ‘Old’ Philology. Karl Stackmann, for example, asks what distinguishes the Material Philology from the Older German Philology and comes to the conclusion that there is not really much of a difference: Karl Stackmann, “Neue Philologie?,” in Modernes Mittelalter: Neue Bilder einer Populären Epoche, ed. by Joachim Heinzle (Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig: Insel Taschenbuch, 1994), pp. 398 – 425. In a similar way, Peter Strohschneider criticises the diversity of methodological approaches, of study interests and of theoretical implications displayed in the 1990 issue of Speculum, Peter Strohschneider, “Situationen des Textes: Okkasionelle Bemerkungen zur ‘New Philology’,” Zeitschift für Deutsche Philologie 116:(Sonderheft Philologie als Textwissenschaft – Alte und Neue Horizonte) (1997): p. 63.  Susan Yager, “New Philology,” in Handbook of Medieval Studies: Terms – Methods – Trends, ed. by Albrecht Classen (Berlin and Boston, MA: DeGruyter, 2010), p. 999.

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a “theory of a physical text”.⁵⁴ His postulations are developed out of Derrida’s notion of absence and presence as well as the idea of the trace. Dagenais thus examines medieval literature from a similar theoretical perspective than Material Philology. His study approaches the following set of questions: Could a theory of the written word on the written page which suppresses, closes off, such basic concepts as author, text, textual tradition, and intertextuality actually open up, by focusing on a unique, concrete physical occurrence of a written object, a different set of concepts which might prove equally basic to our ideas of what writing is: noise, dialogue, interruption, fading, blanks, margins?⁵⁵

What Dagenais proposes is “a shift in the unit we study from “text” to (for medievalists, at least) the individual, unique, concrete manuscript codex.”⁵⁶ This quite radical rejection of the printed edition implies that literary scholars of, say, the Canterbury Tales, should not study the text as it is printed in Benson’s Riverside Chaucer, but they would have to choose single manuscripts as sources of their text. But similar to the Material Philology, Dagenais’s theory steers our attention towards all those manuscript elements that are neglected in critical editions. In addition, it also does away with the common idea that the effect of ‘scribal mistakes’ was a ‘corruption’ of an ‘original’ ‘text’ – as all these terms lose their evaluative power: “The very act of suppressing such concepts as “scribal error” (and the rest of the vocabulary which goes with it: carelessness, distraction, ignorance, contamination) invites us to reevaluate medieval texts on their own terms.”⁵⁷ What is called multivocality and open-endedness by Stephen Nichols also features in John Dagenais’s theory: by reading literary texts in their material artefacts rather than in modern editions, and thus by taking into account all the manuscript elements, readers will find that “a manuscript is a dialogue which may take place across centuries: marginal and interlinear comments, emendations, glosses. The audience may even talk among themselves, ignoring the “text” of the performance”.⁵⁸ Another scholar who voiced related views without suscribing to the Material Philologists’ label is Ardis Butterfield. She supports the postulations shared by Material Philology’s as well as Dagenais’s theory and demands to “reconsti-

 John Dagenais, “That Bothersome Residue: Toward a Theory of the Physical Text,” in Vox Intertexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. by Alger Nicolaus Doane and Carol Braun Pasternack (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 246 – 263.  Ibid., p. 247.  Ibid., p. 252.  Ibid., p. 254.  Ibid., p. 256.

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tute the page of the scribal manuscript as an authentic object in its own right. We are beginning to recognize that it is not a mere transparency through which the author’s “original” is to be viewed but rather an artefact of independent visual interest.”⁵⁹ And further: “This is not to abandon the notion of authorship but to broaden it. The more we concentrate on the physical characteristic of medieval manuscripts, the more closely we can perceive notions of authorship in the making.”⁶⁰ The role of the scribe – compared to that of the author – is re-evaluated by Butterfield, who carefully analyses scribal reactions to Troilus and Criseyde and different French literary texts and comes to the conclusion that “[w]e must, too, credit the scribe – indeed all of those involved in turning the text into a written, and painted, material object – with certain “reproductive rights,” for each text is idiosyncratically shaped and formed by the unique physical act of writing it out.”⁶¹ Butterfield thus shares many of the ideas of Material Philology, while not calling herself a Material Philologists. For the purpose of this study, the ideas of the Material Philology have to be supplemented, as they do not lend themselves without restriction for a literary study of medieval texts. The reason for this is that Material Philology’s notion of ‘text’ is problematic. From a theoretical formation that ascribes instability and open-endedness to a medium we might expect a notion of ‘text’ that is just as open and indefinite as the medium holding it. But while Material Philologists are very much concerned with the openness of the medieval manuscript as a medium, their dealing with the notion of text tends to be rather unspecific. In his 1989 Éloge de la Variante, Cerquiglini had still been quite explicit about his idea of text. When discussing the piecemeal, ever-changeable and open character of medieval writing, he maintains that one “can see that the term text is hardly applicable to these works.”⁶² Material Philologists, however, only offer indirect glimpses at their understanding of text. In 1994, for example, Stephen Nichols describes the manuscript context with the following words: “Besides intervening in the ‘author’s’ text, the manuscript matrix encourages supplementation as a contextualizing gesture. Annotation and commentary, for example, are two fundamental components of medieval manuscripts that we may generically term

 Ardis Butterfield, “Mise-en-page in the Troilus Manuscripts: Chaucer and French Manuscript Culture,” Huntington Library Quarterly: A Journal for the History and Interpretation of English and American Civilization 58:1 (1995): p. 49.  Ibid.  Ibid.  Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, p. 34 [ highlights in the original].

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supplements to the text”.⁶³ Putting the “author” in quotation marks cannot hide the fact that Nichols basically sees the text as an authorial entity which is exposed on all sides to influences. The marked difference between Nichols’ Material Philology and, say, Lachmann’s approach to medieval texts, might be that Lachmann conceived of these influences as corruptions and deteriorations while Nichols regards them in a more neutral way as supplements or scribal recensions. What remains, however, is the basic division into an original and authorial text on the one hand and supplementations to this original on the other.⁶⁴ Whether the effects of these supplementations are called detrimental or simply altering, the division remains. I would like to dissolve this division and argue that the openness can already be inscribed into the original text. In other words, the addition of other manuscript elements, the temporal open-endedness, as well as all the other features of the Material Philology, rather than being later influences on the original text, may already be written into it from the beginning. Further, I aim to show that these inscribed features can be traced and studied today because texts like the Regement of Princes display and perform them, in some cases more and in others less openly. Here, the concept of performativity offers a fruitful addition to my theoretical approach, because it helps suspending the division between an initially stable text and the destabilising manuscript culture. Originating in linguistics and speech act theory, at the basis of performativity lies the idea that an utterance is not a mere “linguistic description of non-linguistic actions” but that speech acts are rather “actions in themselves, actions of a distinctively linguistic kind”.⁶⁵ This means that words do more than simply describe the world a speaker and an addressee find themselves in; words change this world by being expressed. The example most commonly invoked to explain this idea is the sentence “I hereby pronounce you husband and wife,” which, rather than just describing what the priest does, has the power to establish a life-long bond be-

 Nichols, “Philology and Its Discontents,” p. 120.  The controversial term “original” is here used in an over-subscribed way and for the sake of opposition. In how far one can speak of an “original” in the first place is disputable. Cases like The Canterbury Tales make it impossible to speak of an original: single tales are known to have circulated before the composition of the rest of the Tales. John Gower’s Confessio Amantis is another example for the difficulties one faces when speaking of an original as it is impossible to ascertain which of the three recensions deserves this label.  James Loxley, Performativity: the New Critical Idiom (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), p. 2. Next to Loxley’s introductory book, Richard Schechner offers another overview on the topic: Richard Schechner, Performance Studies – An Introduction (London and New York: Routledge, 2002).

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tween two people and hence does change the world. Since J. L. Austin’s observations in the 1950s, performativity has spread out to other disciplines and become an umbrella term applied widely. It has especially gained in popularity since its use in gender theory, when in 1990 Judith Butler postulated that all gender ascriptions are mere constructions and part of a performative reiteration of conventions: “Gender reality is performative which means, quite simply, that it is real only to the extent that it is performed.”⁶⁶ Thus, sentences like “Congratulations, it’s a boy!”, are also more than mere descriptions of a reality, but reiterate society’s expectations that a baby’s biological sex necessarily steers it into a life that is that of a boy, man, father, brother, etc. Rather than exploring the social and political implications of performativity, I understand it first and foremost as a textual potential, as describing the specific function of a text, which goes beyond being descriptive or referential: rather than merely stating a fact or describing an action, a performative text constitutes an action in itself. Both a text’s materiality and its self-reflexivity are of increased significance when texts are studied as performative. When it comes to literary studies and performativity’s incorporation into literary theory, the concept seems to diverge from Austin’s and Searle’s speech act theory. Rather, as Uwe Wirth states: “Self-reflexivity is – next to the alleged non-referentiality – the keyword which has made performativity play a part in literary theory.”⁶⁷ German performance studies have discussed the theoretical implications of performativity on works of art. Erika Fischer-Lichte states that if viewed from the perspective of performativity, our perception of several aspects of an artwork change: first the relation between subject and object, i. e. viewer and viewed, and second the relation between the material and the symbolic or referential nature of a work of art.⁶⁸ Whereas the materiality of a work of art – Fischer-Lichte uses brushwork as an example – had been seen in the light of its referential potential,

 Judith Butler, “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Gender Theory,” in Performing Feminisms: Feminist Critical Theory and Theatre, ed. by S. Case (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), p. 278.  Uwe Wirth, Performanz – Zwischen Sprachphilosophie und Kulturwissenschaften (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), p. 25, my own translation. The original quote is: “Selbstbezüglichkeit ist – neben der vermeintlichen Nicht-Referentialität – das Stichwort, unter dem die Theorie des Performativen Eingang in die Literaturtheorie gefunden hat.”  “Die Performance schuf dergestalt eine Situation, in der zwei Relationen neu bestimmt wurden, die für eine hermeneutische ebenso wie für eine semiotische Ästhetik grundlegend sind: erstens die Beziehung zwischen Subjekt und Objekt, Betrachter und Betrachtetem, Zuschauer und Darsteller, und zweitens die Beziehung zwischen Körper- bzw. Materialhaftigkeit und Zeichenhaftigkeit der Elemente, zwischen Signifkant und Signifikat,” Erika Fischer-Lichte, Ästhetik des Performativen (Frankfurt / Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004), p. 19.

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the performative turn perceives the materiality and self-referentiality as creating meaning not by referring to something else but by starting a reflection about the artefact.⁶⁹ Irmgard Maassen’s discussion of the performativity of early modern literary texts demonstrates how these somewhat abstract considerations can be applied in a literary study.⁷⁰ She sees the texts as already including – she speaks of performing or simulating – the manuscript context they are to encounter later. Maassen’s study postulates two kinds of performativity: functional performativity and structural performativity.⁷¹ Functional performativity, on the one hand, denotes the situatedness of texts in a material context which Maassen describes as the “medial circulation of the material text, through which products of a written culture are integrated into the practice of a performative culture.”⁷² This includes processes of staging a dramatic text, but also the circulation or copying of a text. Thus, functional performativity emphasises the particular form and processes that are related to the manuscript production of medieval texts. This emphasis places functional performativity in the close vicinity of the Material Philology, which focuses on exactly these aspects of manuscript production. Maassen’s structural performativity, on the other hand, understands performative aspects not as something outside of the text and related to its materiality, but rather integrates it into the text. Maassen discusses several “performative textual strategies” that simulate presence, authenticity, corporeality, sensuality and immediacy for the reader.⁷³ These strategies are, and this is important, “placed in the text deliberately, […] they are textual strategies […].”⁷⁴ In specific terms, this means that a text can simulate oral communication; it can authenticate its history; it can create the presence of an author.⁷⁵ Cerquiglini, Nichols and others are mainly concerned with textual phenomena which Maassen describes as functional performativity, i. e. their research focuses on a text’s mate-

 Ibid.  Irmgard Maassen, “Text und / als / in der Performanz in der frühen Neuzeit: Thesen und Überlegungen,” Paragrana 10:1 (2001): pp. 285 – 302.  “funktionale Performativität (Text in der Performanz)” and “strukturelle Performativität (Performativität im Text),” ead., p. 289, my translation.  “Text in der Performanz bezieht sich auf das mediale Zirkulieren des materiellen Textes, wodurch Produkte der schriftlichen Kultur in die Praktiken der performativen Kultur eingebunden werden”, ead.  “Performanz im Text bezeichnet demgegenüber die performativen Textstrategien, die im textuellen Medium selbst der Simulation von Präsenz, Authentizität, Körperlichkeit, Sinnlichkeit, ereignishaftem Vollzug dienen”, ead., p. 291, my translation.  “Vielmehr wird davon ausgegangen, daß diese Spuren des Performativen bewußt gelegt sind, daß sie eine Textstrategie darstellen […]”, ead, my translation.  Ead., pp. 291– 292.

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riality and the wider context of production and transmission the text is situated in. While elements of this functional performativity will repeatedly play a role in my own study, I will maintain that the other type Maassen describes, the performativity inherent in the text, is the more interesting with regards to the Regement of Princes. Not from a strictly performative point of view, but rather fittingly, Elizabeth Scala asks: “How can these texts help, in a sense, but replicate the vicissitudes of their literary context, the means and conditions of their production? The text a writer produces and works to produce can only begin from the sense of textuality available from the manuscript conditions and manuscript culture under which that writer works.”⁷⁶ She bases these thoughts on studies at the intersection of sociology and arts, which focus on “the social nature of the arts, in their production, distribution and reception”.⁷⁷ At the basis of Scala’s thoughts lies the idea that in addition to “what the text says”, inherent in every text is also “what the text does”.⁷⁸ She describes this latter layer as the text’s “unconscious discourse.”⁷⁹ I subscribe to the idea that medieval texts negotiate their materiality in what Scala would call an “unconscious discourse” and what I prefer to call “in a performative way”. The main characteristics of this manuscript materiality, as postulated by the Material Philology, are the instability and open-endedness of medieval texts. The concept of performativity makes it possible to incorporate these ideas into a literary study of the Regement of Princes. This somewhat eclectic theoretical approach informs the methods which will be applied in this study. Both theoretical prepositions, Material Philology and performativity, come with particular methods, and just like the two theoretical perspectives will be combined here, so will the methods they are connected with. On the one hand, being indebted to Material Philology, I will repeatedly take into account the manuscript situation of medieval literature, and most importantly the witnesses of the Regement itself. On the other, the performative approach will be implemented in close readings of the Regement and other texts. My close readings will mostly be based on Blyth’s edition of Hoccleve’s work,

 Elizabeth Scala, Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and Literary Structure in Late Medieval England (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), p. 32. While Scala’s approach to absent narratives in medieval literature is a psychoanalytic rather than a performative one, her premises are quite fruitful for this study.  Janet Wolff, The Social Production of Art (Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1993), preface.  Scala, Absent Narratives, Manuscript Textuality, and Literary Structure in Late Medieval England, p. 5.  Ead., p. 6.

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but will also, staying true to the combinative nature of my theoretical frame, draw on several of the Regement’s manuscripts. And it is important and follows the postulations of the Material Philology, that it is not only the text that undergoes this examination: other manuscript elements, too, are subject to close readings. Images will be examined in this way, and so will other visual markers such as nota bene-hands, the colour of ink, paraph marks, etc.

1.4 Tracing Performances of Manuscript Culture This work traces performances of the materiality that is inherent in manuscript culture. These performances are found on different levels of the Regement of Princes, and they transgress textual boundaries, as they connect inner-textual motifs and narrative features with extra-textual elements such as images or spatial issues. Each of the three following chapters lays its focus on one particular aspect. In Chapter 2, I will discuss the autobiographical elements that feature most heavily in the prologue, but also, to a lesser degree, permeate the Regement proper. I argue that the prologue creates a biography for the narrator Thomas Hoccleve, but also one for the text itself. This textual biography is created through the narrator’s autobiographical descriptions. Both biographies move on and across three temporal levels: past, present, and future. In the prologue, the narrator’s past as well as his potential future, even his death are the subject of discussion and his life as a scribe becomes almost tangible. As the narrator describes his work at the Privy Seal Office, a glimpse at the future of the Regement as a text – and indeed the future of every medieval literary text – foreshadows the instability that is an inevitable consequence of a system of literary dissemination that is based on the work of human copyists. The parallel development of the two biographies culminates at the end of the prologue, in the moment in which the narrator sits down and starts writing. Here, the present of the narrator’s life is firmly linked with the process of creating the Regement proper, its coming into being, so to speak. The manuscript context in which medieval literature finds itself is not only discussed on the basis of the personal life of the narrator / intra-textual author / scribe Thomas Hoccleve, but it also extends into the life of the text, where it sets the cornerstones of its dissemination and future transmission. The third chapter addresses the process of glosinge in the Regement. The text, I argue, is glossed in two senses: first, it contains marginal Latin glosses that complement the Middle English main text. These glosses stand in a relationship to the main text that is potentially subversive and everything but clear-cut.

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A close look at this relation shows that both on a spatial and a textual level, tension arises that complicates any attempt at interpreting this textual interplay. In the second sense of the word glosinge, I will show how the text employs quotes from authoritative sources and discusses and interprets these quotes. These interpretations at times are rather ambiguous and spurious and clearly serve a particular end formulated in the text. Both the practice of adding marginal glosses to a text and the process interpretation or exegetical reading, it will be shown, are performed in a way that creates tension and ambiguity which, in turn, affects our reading of the Regement as a whole. Chapter 4 revolves around the interplay of media. It will discuss in how far mediality, as an integral part of manuscript culture, is used in the manuscripts of the Regement in order to convey a particular political message. Even though speech as a medium will be part of my discussion, I will mainly focus on the relation of text and images in the Regement. This relation not only evokes and performs the manuscript context in a most direct way by depicting the multi-faceted work of different artisans that contribute to the production of books. Moreover, inherent in this collaboration and the resulting text-image-connection is a semantic potential that is explored in this chapter. Next to the examination of several smaller paintings, my focus lies on the two major images that play an important role in the tradition of the Regement: the presentation picture showing Thomas Hoccleve as well as the famous Chaucer portrait. I argue that these two images present two contrasting concepts of authorship: while Chaucer is depicted as an old-fashioned orthodox clerk, Thomas Hoccleve is presented as a young courtier who is in the process of becoming part of Prince Henry’s court. The clerkliness of the portrayed Geoffrey Chaucer is strengthened in the text, which presents him as a teacher or mentor in the life of Thomas Hoccleve, as a counselling father-figure firmly situated in the realms of learning and knowledge (rather than courtly surroundings).

2 “Hoccleve, fadir myn, men clepen me”¹: Textual Biography in the Regement of Princes Thomas Hoccleve, “Scoller of Geoffrey Chaucer” In 1632, an unknown owner of several medieval literary texts had them bound, possibly rebound, into a manuscript that is now called Harley 4826. Next to Thomas Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes, this manuscript contains John Lydgate’s Life of St. Edmund as well as Life of St. Fremund, the Legend of St. Austin, the pseudoAristotelian Secreta Secretorum, and a number of other texts. On the occasion of getting these texts bound into one volume in 1632, the owner included a number of paper leaves in front of three of the texts: the Life of St. Edmund, the Secreta Secretorum, and the Regement of Princes. The two pages inserted before the latter are of interest here. The first one is a title page that introduces The worckes of Thomas Occlefe (Sometyme of the Privy Signet office) that is to saye 1. A Dialogue inter Occeff et mendicum 2. De regimine Principis to the Prince of Wales who was Afterwardes Henri the fifte king of England 1632²

The second of the inserted paper leaves has a text box drawn onto it, in which the same hand, presumably that of the owner, inserted a short text about Thomas Hoccleve’s life. Above the text box, a heading states that this is taken from “de Claris Angliae Scriptoribus Cap: 747”, a register of medieval authors written by one Johannes Pitseus in 1619.³ The text inside the text box does  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 1864.  My transcription, including the missing ‘l’ in line 6; abbreviations are extended, size of font and change of font, as well as cases of capitalisation are neglected. So is the frame around the text and the colour of ink.  Johannes Pitseus, Relationum historicarum de rebus anglicis Tomus Primus. De Antiquitate Ecclesiae Brytannicae. De Academiis Angliae. De illustribus Britanniae scriptoribus (Paris, 1619), cap. 747. DOI 10.1515/9783110523089-002

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not read like a quote from Pitseus (who at times is also referenced as Pitsæus) all the time, but rather suggests that Pitseus was taken as a basis on which the 1632 owner elaborated: Thomas Occleff, Occleve or Hoccleff, borne in England of Noble Parents, was sometime the scoller of Geoffrey Chaucer and a diligent imitator of him in his studyes.⁴ A great lover of Poesie and diligent in Polishing the elegancy of oure Tounge which hee much adorned. Hee wrott many things in english meter, ingeniosly and conceitedly: and in prose both Latin and English neatly, clearly and eloquently. Thomas Walsingham in his cronicle doth not obscurely taxe him of Heresye, how truely I know not; let others judge*; I fynde no reason to condemm him uppon one mannes testimony, or deprive him of due prayse by rasing him out of the catholick cataglogue; for the workes by him published deserve to have his name remembred of Posterity. He wrott, besides these present, diverse other workes (some whereof the sayd Pitsæus mentioneth). Hee flourished about the yeare of Grace 1410 Henry the fourthe being king of England, onto whose sone Henry Prince of wales (afterwards King Henry the fifte) he dedicateth the treatise called de Regimine Principis which happily next onto the goodnes of God, might give occasion to the strange mutation which happened in the lyfe and manners of that Prince from debashed and vicious to heroicall and virtuous. Howso ever it weare, certaynely the worke is well worthy to bee taken from obscurity and placed before the eyes of Kinges and Princes⁵

Pitseus’s original is written in Latin, and whoever translated it into the Middle English version found in Harley 4826, stayed close to the Latin original in the beginning and then added quite a few sentences towards the end of the text in the last third (starting with the words “onto whose sone Henry Prince of wales”). Similarly, the reference to Pitseus in lines 10 and 11, “some whereof the sayd Pitsæus mentioneth”, shows that the text as a whole cannot be a quote from Pitseus, but must have been written, at least partly, by the owner in 1632. And in the Regement itself, which follows these two title pages, especially in the prologue, the same hand in the same ink that also drew the text boxes’ frames, has singled out information from the main text and made annotations in the margin. These annotations highlight what caught this reader’s attention and what they found noteworthy to mark for later readings. Next to translations of Middle English words into the early modern English equivalents, the most interesting  Interestingly, this 17th-century account of Hoccleve as student and follower of Chaucer is paralleled in the case of John Lydgate. Larry Scanlon and James Simpson state that “[a]lready in the sixteenth century bibliographers and editors had formulated the concept of Lydgate as Chaucer’s foil: Lydgate is ’the verye perfect disciple and imitator of the great Chaucer, the onelye glorye and beauty of [our tunge].’” Larry Scanlon and James Simpson, “Introduction”, John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. by id. (Notre Dame, IN, 2006), p. 2.  Again, my transcription; abbreviations are extended. The asterisk in line 7 corresponds to a marginal gloss outside of the text box that states “se pag: 7:”.

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bits of information for this reader were, for example: “Occliff no wicleffist”,⁶ “Occleff a catholicke”,⁷ “Occleff of the privy Seale, 24 yeares”,⁸ as well as “Occleff maryed”.⁹ Harley 4826 and its 1632 reader and commentator are one of the first surviving examples of the special interest the autobiographical prologue of the Regement evokes in its audience. Like so many later readers, this 17th-century owner noticed the personal note struck by the narrator, and just like scholars in the beginning of the 20th century, the reader almost four hundred years earlier also considered the narrator Thomas Hoccleve to be the same person as the author Thomas Hoccleve. This, of course, does not come as a surprise in a text that introduces its narrator as Thomas Hoccleve – albeit rather far into the text, in line 1865. But not only have scholars and readers of the Regement had to differentiate between Hoccleve the historical author and Hoccleve the narrator-persona (if they deemed such a differentiation necessary). Additionally, the narrator Thomas Hoccleve talks about his life as an official scribe in much detail in the prologue and, to make matters even more complicated, he fictionalises himself as the author of the Regement proper, as I will show in the following. The name Thomas Hoccleve thus denotes the historical person, the narrator, as well as the intra-textual, fictional author. The denominations themselves – “historical” / “empirical author”, “narrator”, “intra-textual” / “fictional author” – are, of course, part of today’s literary discourse. They are used for the sake of clearly defining the different levels on which the persona Thomas Hoccleve is constructed and the ways in which these levels interact. When it comes to the fictionalisation of narrators as authors and, at the same time, the incorporation of autobiographical elements, Hoccleve is in good company, as a number of parallels to 15th-century poets can be drawn. Robert Meyer-Lee examines what he calls “one of Lydgate’s most characteristic poetic voices, an authoritative first-person persona necessarily associated with his empirical person”.¹⁰ This persona, moreover, is constantly set into relation  On folio 87r, next to the line “The precious body off oure lord ihesu”.  On folio 88r, next to the line “And ever schalle I truste in goddis grace”.  On folio 92v, next to the lines “In the office off the pryvi seale I wone / And to write there is my custom, and wone / unto the seal and have twenty yere / and foure, come Esteryn […]”.  On folio 100r, next to the narrator’s answer “Ya sothly fadir myn right so I am” to the Old Man’s question whether he is married or not.  Robert Meyer-Lee, “Lydgate’s Laureate Pose,” In John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. by Larry Scanlon and James Simpson. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, p. 37. A slightly younger and more complex reading of the same passages is Robert Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 38 – 42.

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to Chaucer and his poetic voices. Meyer-Lee compares how Chaucer’s narrator, when asked about his personality and identity, remains opaque and is at no time connected to the empirical Geoffrey Chaucer. In contrast, Lydgate’s pilgrim narrator in the prologue to the Siege of Thebes, a continuation of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, answers the Host’s question of his name and origin in a very specific way: he promptly responds that his name is Lydgate, monk of Bury, that he is almost fifty years old, and in town on a pilgrimage. Meyer-Lee reads this explicit self-naming and self-identification as a necessary move to provide the Siege of Thebes, a text that mentions neither source nor patron, with an authority.¹¹ The source of authority in this case is the author’s name and the strong link to the historical Lydgate thus established. That Lydgate’s name alone lends authority is based on his status as quasi-official laureate poet of the Lancastrian court.¹² Similarly, the narrator of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis explicitly names himself as John Gower, albeit only in the last of the eight books (VIII, 2322): “Sche axeth me what is mi name. / ‘Ma dame,’ I seide, ‘John Gower.’”¹³ And in an even more obvious moment of fictionalization, the Confessio Amantis lays open how the different roles of author and narrator are intertwined: in the beginning of Book I, the first person narrator, Amans, describes his endeavour of writing about his experiences with love. A Latin marginal gloss next to this passage states that “Hic quasi in persona aliorum, quos amor alligat, fingens se auctor esse Amantem, varias eorum passiones variis huius libri distinccionibus per singula scribere proposit.” – “Here, like in the person of others, who are bound by love, the author who pretends to be Amans, proposes to compile a number of their passions from several books into one.”¹⁴ Especially the clause “fingens se auctor esse Amantem” debunks the fictive character of the persona Amans and at the same time creates the strong connection between the historical person John Gower and the narrator Amans, who later in the book will name himself John Gower as well. The autobiographical bond is further strengthened when in the prologue, the narrator describes how he met King Richard in a barge

 Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt, p. 39.  Ibid., 40. The concept of laureate poetry in the 15th century will be discussed in more detail below in Chapter 4.4.  John Gower, The English Works of John Gower, Early English Text Society, ed. by G. C. Macaulay, 2 vols. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Hübner, 1900 – 1901), Book VIII, l. 2322.  Gower, The English Works of John Gower, Book I, gloss next to l. 59 ff. The translation is my own.

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floating on the Thames. Richard invites Gower into his boat, where he asks him to pen “som newe thing” for him.¹⁵ How does Hoccleve in his many facets and personae differ from, say, Lydgate’s and Gower’s appropriations of a fictionalised autobiographical narrator persona? I hope to show in the following chapter that the Regement’s fictionalisation of the narrator persona as intra-textual author as well as historical author goes beyond creating a rather concrete image of the author: it establishes a close link between this intra-textual author /narrator and his text. The autobiographical elements in Hoccleve’s texts have received much scholarly attention and their existence as well as the density with which they permeate the texts are undisputed: The Regement of Princes, “La Male Regle” and especially The Series all feature a narrator who is called Thomas Hoccleve and who alludes to Hoccleve’s life repeatedly and in a detailed way. These allusions in the Regement have been discussed from different perspectives. Studies from the early 20th century, like Thomas Frederick Tout’s Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England or Frederick J. Furnivall’s edition of Hoccleve’s works, focus on the texts’ potential to tell us something about the historical situation of the clerks of the Privy Seal Office or the authors of the time.¹⁶ Later, less positivistic, studies approach the issue with different research

 Gower, The English Works of John Gower, Prologue, l. l51* (the asterisk denotes that this is the first recension quoted).  Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England, V: The Wardrobe, The Chamber and the Small Seals. A. Compton Reeves, for example, extracts information from Hoccleve’s oeuvre under the impression that “Hoccleve’s poetry is a source of insights into the poet’s occupation, attitudes, and the general course of his life.” (Reeves, “Thomas Hoccleve, Bureaucrat,” p. 201). In a similar way, Malcolm Richardson argues that “[s]een in his social context, Hoccleve was exactly what he claimed to be, a conspicuous underachiever” (Richardson, “Hoccleve in His Social Context,” p. 313.). Frederick J. Furnivall’s first editions of Hoccleve texts follow the same trajectory, reconstructing the life of a weak author based on what Furnivall perceived as texts of bad quality: “Hoccleve’s metre is poor. So long as he can count ten syllables by his fingers, he is content”: Frederick J. Furnivall, “Forewords,” in Hoccleve’s Works: The Minor Poems, Early English Text Society, ed. by Frederick J. Furnivall and Israel Gollancz (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. xli. An especially early account of Hoccleve’s life drawn from his texts is W. J. Courthope, A History of English Poetry, vol. I (New York: Russell & Russell, 1962), pp. 333 – 340. And with regard to Hoccleve’s relation with Chaucer, Derek Pearsall says that “Thomas Hoccleve, a clerk in the office of the Privy Seal, knew Chaucer personally”, Pearsall, “The English Chaucerians,” p. 222. For a concise yet witty summary of earlier studies that approach the Regement from this particular perspective, see D. C. Greetham, “Self-Referential Artifacts: Hoccleve’s Persona as a Literary Device,” Modern Philology 86 (1989): p. 242.

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aims.¹⁷ In a lecture given in 1982, J. A. Burrow distinguished different approaches to Hoccleve’s autobiographical texts: next to Furnivall and Gollancz, for example, who read them as factual, modern critics “stress rather […] the conventional and non-factual elements in Hoccleve’s self-revelations.”¹⁸ Only some of these studies can be mentioned here. Mitchell emphasises the conventionality in the prologue to the Regement of Princes, but also concedes that known and provable facts have been mixed with conventional material “in such a way that the whole seems true.”¹⁹ In 2001, Ethan Knapp studied the strong connection between the bureaucratic culture Hoccleve was a part of, and the autobiographical mode recurring in his poetry. Knapp argues that “the contemporary financial anxieties in those offices [i. e. the Privy Seal Office, E.K.] were a shaping influence on his experiment in autobiography.”²⁰ Albrecht Classen sees these autobiographical elements as part of Hoccleve’s strategy to dissociate himself from Chaucer’s omnipresence and to fashion himself instead not simply as a tangible person, but really as a tangible author.²¹ If we trace the history of scholarship that addresses autobiographical elements in Hoccleve’s poetry, we find that at the bottom of its development seems to lie a changing stance towards and a difference in thinking about the notions of ‘truth’ or ‘factuality’ on the one hand and ‘fiction’ or ‘non-factuality’ together with ‘conventionality’ on the other. The development of fiction in the Middle Ages has been discussed vividly. The definition I follow here is Dennis H. Green’s: “Fiction is a category of literary text which, although it may also include events that were held to have actually taken place, gives an account of events that could not conceivably have taken place and / or of events that, although possible, did not take place, and which, in doing so, invites the intended audience to be willing to make-believe what would otherwise be regarded as untrue.”²² This definition already blurs the line of actuality and fictionality as it

 In his monograph, Jerome Mitchell gives a good overview of these approaches up to 1968: Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic.  Burrow, “Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve. Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture,” pp. 389 – 390.  Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic, p. 15.  Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England, p. 77.  Albrecht Classen, “Hoccleve’s Independence from Chaucer: A Study in Poetic Emancipation,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 15 (1990): pp. 59 – 81; Albrecht Classen, “The Autobiographical Voice of Thomas Hoccleve,” Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 228 (1991): pp. 299 – 311.  Dennis H. Green, The Beginnings of Medieval Romance: Fact and Fiction, 1150 – 1220 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 4.

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makes clear that fiction may connect to an actual frame of historical events, persons, etc. In stating that fiction “invites the audience to be willing to make-believe”, Green eschews a clear position on the question of how aware an audience can or must be of the fictive character of a narrative. Jan-Dirk Müller offers an addition in this respect. He traces the extensive discussion on fictionality and fictiveness in his 2004 essay.²³ Next to proposing that fictionality must be seen on a spectrum rather than as one extreme of a binary opposition,²⁴ he also maintains that an important characteristic of literary fictions – in contrast to non-literary fictions – is that their fictionality can or should be exposed and detected by the reader.²⁵ Tout, Gollancz, Furnivall and others tended to take information on the authors’ lives at face value, disregarding the texts’ fictionality.²⁶ Through the studies of, for example, Ernst Robert Curtius²⁷ the idea of conventionality entered the studies of medieval texts and affected the discussions of autobiographical writing. Following this development, John A. Burrow discusses the “Conventional Fallacy” as a reaction to Kane’s “Autobiographical Fallacy”,²⁸ questioning the assumption that “convention and autobiographical truth are in general to be taken as incompatible alternatives.”²⁹ In 2010, Andrew James Johnston studied Hoccleve’s autobiographical framing of his Series as a “fiction of the factual”³⁰ and thus made the distinction between the two notions lose all

 Jan-Dirk Müller, “Literarische und andere Spiele: Zum Fiktionalitätsproblem in vormoderner Literatur,” Poetica: Zeitschrift für Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft 36 (2004): pp. 281– 312.  “Aus all dem geht hervor, dass Fiktionalität zu skalieren ist”, ibid., p. 311.  “[Nicht-literarische Fiktionen] dürfen, um wirksam zu bleiben, mindestens im Rahmen ihres institutionellen Zusammenhangs gerade nicht durchschaut werden, im Gegensatz zu literarischen Fiktionen, deren Fiktionscharakter erkannt werden darf oder sogar soll”, ibid., p. 284.  An essay by Paul Lehmann goes as far as excluding certain texts from the 12th and 13th century from the genre as they “can scarcely be ranked as autobiographies, since although they are replete with poetical self-analysis they also deliberately combine truth and fiction.”, Paul Lehmann, “Autobiographies of the Middle Ages,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 3 (1953): p. 46.  Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 7th ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990).  George Kane, “The Autobiographical Fallacy in Chaucer and Langland Studies (1965),” in Chaucer and Langland: Historical and Textual Approaches, ed. by George Kane (London: Athlone Press, 1989), pp. 1– 15.  Burrow, “Autobiographical Poetry in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve. Sir Israel Gollancz Memorial Lecture,” p. 393.  “Im Folgenden werde ich jedoch zu zeigen versuchen, dass es Hoccleve trotz oder vielleicht sogar gerade wegen seiner Distanz zu den unter den Zeitgenossen üblichen fiktionalen Stoffe und Genres gelang, eine ganz eigene Herangehensweise an das Problem der Fiktion zu entwick-

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its significance. The basis of my own study, in a similar way, is not one that negotiates fact and/or fiction as separable entities. My interest is not to study whether the events described are one or the other. Rather, I maintain that a factual note is employed in order to create a fiction that poses as an account of facts. This factual note is closely linked to the details of the narrator’s personal life that permeate the prologue and, to a certain extent, the Regement proper. Scholars have noted and studied the personal note especially in the prologue and have brought it into connection with the metapoetic function. In a study pertaining to the Regement, Andrew James Johnston describes Hoccleve as coming close to being an “official Lancastrian poet laureate” – at least for a certain length of time.³¹ The poet’s success, according to Johnston, is based on the simple principle of “introducing a radically personal note to his work.”³² The idea that this personal note may have been a strategy is even more pronounced in Albrecht Classen’s work on autobiographical narratives. He believes that Hoccleve’s texts use the autobiographical mode as “a sophisticated literary strategy”.³³ Classen, referring to Hoccleve’s Dialogue, was the first to observe that “Hoccleve’s examination of his own works in terms of their representation value, his theoretical reflections on what he should translate or compose anew, represent a novel stage in Middle English poetry, since a metapoetical discussion is carried out in autobiographical terms.”³⁴ It is especially in the Regement’s prologue where he notices elements of autobiography and descriptions of the writing process being interwoven.³⁵ Other scholars, too, have argued that the prologue and its autobiographical elements were employed for different ends. Derek Pearsall, for example, describes the prologue as not only an “opportunity for auto-biographical self-indulgence on Hoccleve’s part but an essential part of the strategy of the poem for representing the prince as a wise ruler,

eln, und zwar im Sinne einer autobiographisch motivierten Fiktion des Faktischen […]” Andrew James Johnston, “Hoccleves Wahnsinn: Vom Nutzen der autobiographischen Fiktion für das Erzählen,” in Fiktionen des Faktischen in der Renaissance, ed. by Ulrike Schneider and Anita Traninger (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2010), p. 75, my translation.  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 273.  Ibid.  Classen, “The Autobiographical Voice of Thomas Hoccleve,” p. 303.  Ibid., p. 306.  “Autobiographie entwickelt sich zum metafiktionalen Sprechen über den Dichtungsvorgang, d. h. Autobiographie fungiert hier als Metapoesie.” Albrecht Classen, Die Autobiographische Lyrik des Europäischen Spätmittelalters: Studien zu Hugo von Montfort, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Antonio Pucci, Charles d’Orléans, Thomas Hoccleve, Michel Beheim, Hans Rosenplüt und Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino (Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1991), p. 266.

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receptive to the counsel of brave, simple souls such as Hoccleve.”³⁶ And he quotes David Lawton who describes the narrator’s autobiographical mode and especially the frequently used humility topos as a means of validating the value of the Fürstenspiegel it is applied in: “Frankness about personal deficiencies goes hand in hand with political truth-telling.”³⁷ Nobody, however, goes as far as equating the autobiography of the persona Hoccleve with the biography of his text. The metapoetic nature of Hoccleve’s texts is stressed by John Burrow, who argues that “the Series as a whole is to an unusual degree preoccupied with the business of its own composition.”³⁸ My main aim here is to add a further reading of Hoccleve’s autobiographical elements: I will argue that the narrator’s descriptions of his life and his scribal activity not only create a biography for Hoccleve, but also, in a parallel way, a biography for the text itself. In other words: these references to the narrator’s past, present, and future mirror the evolution of the Regement and at the same time foreshadow its future development in a manuscript culture. My reading studies several temporal levels and their interplay. In addition, I will show that it is significant that the descriptions of the narrator’s biography pertain to two parts of his life: on the one hand, his work as a scribe at the Privy Seal Office; on the other hand, his time spent as the author of the Regement’s main part. These two spheres, scribal and authorial, I argue, are mirrored in the creation of a biography for the text: Those pieces of information stressing Hoccleve’s role as an author in a parallel way trace the creation of the Regement, while his descriptions of the Privy Seal Office and his work there imply the future dissemination process the text will undergo, including the instability that will come with it. In addition, I will argue that in creating a biography for the text, the Regement changes the relation between narrator and text: While in other texts of this time, we seem to perceive the text through the narrator figure, which is, in other words, a controlling agency,³⁹ the narrator of the Regement turns out to have been put in the service of the text. His life starts to lose relevance and  Derek Pearsall, “Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes: The Poetics of Royal Self-Representation,” Speculum 69:2 (1994): p. 408.  Lawton, “Dullness and the Fifteenth Century,” p. 764.  Burrow, “Hoccleve’s Series: Experience and Books,” p. 260.  I am thinking of the Troilus-narrator, for example, who is very frank in his narration process: he comments on the events, he holds back certain bits of information and emphasises others, and he stresses his knowledge as well as his ignorance. Another Chaucerian narrator, the Knight, is analysed shrewdly by Andrew James Johnston, who identifies a similar explicitness when it comes to the process of narrating. Johnston shows, however, that this overt control makes the narrator’s “rhetorical failures” the more obvious. Andrew James Johnston, Performing the Middle Ages from ‘Beowulf’ to ‘Othello’ (Turnhout: Brepols, 2008), p. 106.

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he, metaphorically, vanishes into his text. In this discussion of the narrator’s autobiography, the second prominent figure of the Regement, the Old Man, plays a role that has been neglected so far. I will argue that the connection not only between the Old Man and Hoccleve the narrator, but indeed also the connection between the Old Man and the text itself, are much stronger than scholars have assumed so far. These connections will be discussed in more detail below. Studying the narrator’s life in the Regement seems an easy task: after all, no other medieval text offers as much autobiographical detail as those written by Thomas Hoccleve. One aspect of this biography, however, is described in very ambivalent terms in the Regement and is thus extremely hard to pin down: the speaker’s age at the time of narrating. The text remains very unspecific about this information, or rather, it seems to be specific at times, but recurrently undermines its own statements. When the narrator describes his work in the Privy Seal Office and draws a parallel to old soldiers who have served their country all their lives and are mistreated and left to die in poverty,⁴⁰ he says that “[t] wo parties of my lyf and mochil more / I seur am past been.”⁴¹ He has been following this career path at the Privy Seal Office for twenty-four years, which, assuming that he started there as a young man, makes him middle-aged, probably fourty-five years old. On the other hand, the narrator describes himself as “in myn age greene”,⁴² and the Old Man, when first meeting him, says “[t]how nart but yong and has but litil seen”.⁴³ There are other descriptions of the narrator’s age that tie in with the overall ambiguous and confusing picture. This ambivalence regarding the narrator’s age stands in stark contrast to the detail with which some of the other aspects of his life, like his bodily worries or his work situation, are described. Ultimately, it prevents us from forming a clear picture of the narrator – do we imagine him to be as withered as the Old Man, or as young as the prince? Every time the text presents him as one of the two and we picture a certain kind of person, the next passage might contest exactly this picture. In addition, both the narrator’s “age greene” and his old age are used as justifications in the text: on the one hand, the young and inexperienced narrator needs the guidance and counsel of the Old Man. On the other hand, as an experienced scribe and a long-time clerk of the Privy Seal he deserves his payment, which motivates his composition of the Regement and helps him, or so he hopes, in receiving the financial compensation that he – long-term employee that he is – deserves. In short, the matter of the narrator’s age in the text confus   

Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 869 – 903. Ibid., ll. 946 – 947. Ibid., l. 834. Ibid., l. 146.

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es readers and at the same time it is employed serving different aims in different parts of the text. But in addition, the text uses the narrator’s age to state an exemplary case: Age and time are, as I will show in this chapter, pivotal aspects in the Regement and especially in the narrator figure. And just like the narrator seems to combine different ages in one person, the text conflates different temporal levels simultaneously. This simultaneity is the focus of this chapter: As I will show in the following discussion, the text inherently holds different levels of time that all deal with issues of textual production. The text uses the narrator’s age as a mise en abyme-construction that reflects the ambivalence in the narrator’s biography as well as in the text’s biography. My discussion starts with the narrator’s life as described especially in the prologue. I will show how the narrator’s autobiographical accounts with all their detail create a life for his text, a life that takes place on different temporal levels. In a second step, I will take a closer look at the relation between the narrator and the Old Man, who is often described as the narrator’s alter ego.⁴⁴ I will argue that he is not only an alter ego-figure filling gaps in the narrator’s own biography, but that he additionally plays a role in constituting the textual biography, acting as a personified parallel for the political function inherent in the text. In the end, my discussion will focus on how the relation between narrator and text is changed once seen before the background of the concept of a textual biography.

2.1 Interwoven Biographies The autobiographical descriptions of Thomas Hoccleve’s life as scribe and intratextual author can be read as simulating and foreshadowing the past, present and future of the text itself. As already mentioned, the descriptions of the narrator’s life comprise two levels. On the first of these two levels, the text describes the narrator’s authorial activity. In the following, I will discuss how, by addressing this authorial activity, the Regement traces the creation of the text in a performative way. I will show how the writing process of the Regement proper is emphasised repeatedly and in a way that merges temporal layers and thus creates a biographical account not only of the narrator’s life, but also of the text’s existence. Subsequently, I will address the second level on which the text’s biogra-

 See, for example, Larry Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 303: “The beggar is Hoccleve’s alter-ego, in both public and personal terms”.

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phy is created through the narrator’s life: the scribal level, which recurs to the narrator’s occupation as a scribe in the Privy Seal Office. That the Regement is written is stressed throughout. Not only is the reader informed about the time and place of composition, “[a]t Chestres In, right faste by the Stronde” “on the morwe”,⁴⁵ but the very process of creating the text is repeatedly brought up. For example, at the end of the prologue the Old Man tells the narrator: “Thy penne take and wryte / As thow canst, and thy sorwe torne shal / Into gladnesse – I doute it nat at al.”⁴⁶ The materiality of writing is further emphasised when the prologue ends and the narrator sits down: “[a]nd penne and ynke and parchememeyn I hente, / And to parfourme his [i. e. the Old Man’s, E.K.] wil and his entente / I took corage”.⁴⁷ Throughout the Regement proper, the text goes back to assure the dedicatee, Prince Henry, that it was written for his benefit. These gestures of submission and assurance never occur without a more or less unobtrusive hint at the narrator’s financial situation, but more importantly, they also never occur without referring to the process of writing that is connected to the text’s beneficial purpose.⁴⁸ But the text not only describes the process of its own being written: throughout the prologue, the time before the writing, the first steps of planning and contemplation are dwelt on. This happens, for example, when the Old Man instructs Hoccleve about the type of text he should write: “a goodly tale or two, / On which he may desporten him by nyght”,⁴⁹ and: “Sharpe thy penne and wryte on lustyly. / Let see, my sone, make it fressh and gay, / Owte thyn aart if thow canst craftily”.⁵⁰ What sounds like an unspecific entertaining sort of text is further specified after a warning against flattery (the first of many in the Regement), which seems to change the Old Man’s mind about the kind of text being appropriate, as he says: Wryte him nothyng that sowneth into vice. Kythe thy love in mateere of sadnesse. Looke if thow fynde canst any tretice Growndid on his estates holsumnesse. Swich thyng translate and unto his hynesse, As humblely as that thow canst, presente.⁵¹

      

Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 5 and 2012 respectively. Ibid., ll. 1874– 1876. Ibid., ll. 2013 – 2015. See, for example, ibid., ll. 4383 – 4404. Ibid., ll. 1902– 1903. Ibid., ll. 1905 – 1907. Ibid., ll. 1947– 1952, my emphasis.

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This change of the text’s purpose from entertaining to morally edifying looks like a very elaborate form of the Horatian maxim underlying much of medieval writing: to teach and to please.⁵² While the Confessio Amantis states in a straightforward manner that it will speak “somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore”,⁵³ the matter is treated very differently here. It is not only drawn out in all detail, but it is also presented not as an entity – like in Gower – but as two contradicting principles of writing. The text here presents the maxim as two conflicting structures rather than as two sides of the same coin. But while the text shows the contradictory nature of this postulation, it does not distance itself from the maxim, but rather – with the narrator’s words “Fadir, I assente”⁵⁴ – accepts the Old Man’s prerequisites as Hoccleve sits down to write exactly this kind of text. This might be an expression of authorial self-fashioning, with the author showing that he can write whatever text is demanded, even if this particular combination seems to be almost impossible to turn into writing. By leaving this contradiction unresolved, however, the text opens itself up to a certain degree, widening the possibilities of content and tone, and it makes readers wonder how these considerations match the end product, the text they are reading: is it entertaining or serious and morally useful, or both? In either case, by implying a purpose behind the writing and by then destabilising this purpose and making it ambivalent, in this passage the text once more directs our attention to the circumstances that led to its production. At the same time the text also gives us insight into the material side of the Regement’s creation process when the Old Man repeatedly orders the narrator to sharpen his pen,⁵⁵ to take his pen and write,⁵⁶ or to find a good source and then translate it.⁵⁷ This puts the text squarely on the map of literary production and of authorial (or rather compilatory) activity. The narrator names his three main sources – Aristotle’s letters to Alexander the Great (known as the Secreta Secretorum), Egidius Romanus’s Regimine Principum, and Jaques de Cessoles’ Chessbook – and describes the eclectic method he plans to employ: speaking about the Secreta Secretorum and the Regimine Principum, the narrator states that

 The original Latin text conveys a slightly different message, but is commonly cited as “to teach and to please at the same time”: “Aut prodesse uolunt aut delectare poetae / aut simul et iucunda et idonea dicere uitae”, C. O. Brink, ed., Horace on Poetry: The ’Ars Poetica’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971), ll. 333 – 334.  Gower, The English Works of John Gower, Prologue, l. 19.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 1953.  Ibid., l. 1905.  Ibid., e. g. l. 1874.  Ibid., ll. 1949 – 1951.

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“plotmeel thynke I to translate.”⁵⁸ The same is to happen to the third source, Jacob de Cessolis’ Chessbook, which “heere and there, […] I thynke translate it.”⁵⁹ It is not simply the activity of translating both texts into Middle English that strikes us as interesting; more than that it is the selective nature of this translation that is not only expressed in the word ‘plotmeel’ – piecemeal – , but also in the expression ‘heere and there’. ‘Heere and there’ can have several meanings, most of them referring to denoting relations of space.⁶⁰ But in this context, I believe, the expression means that parts of the book, found ‘heere and there’ are to be picked out and included into the Regement. The selective approach is further described in a third reference to the activity of a compiler. A few lines down, Hoccleve writes: I am seur that tho bookes ale three Red hath and seen your innat sapience; And as I hope, hir vertu folwen yee But unto yow compyle I this sentence That, at the good lust of your excellence, In short yee mowen beholde heer and rede That in hem thre is scatered fer in brede.⁶¹

Not only is this stanza the first of two describing the activity no longer as ‘translating’, but as ‘compiling’. In addition, the selective nature of the endeavour is stressed once more: those pieces of the texts which are “scatered fer in brede” (“scattered far and wide”), are now collected. Following which principle particular pieces of text are selected and others neglected is not specified, but it is the “sentence” that is compiled, the “wisdom” or “knowledge”.⁶² A second incident of the word “compylen” can be found seven stanzas later, at the beginning of the first section “De fide observanda”. Here, the narrator reminds the addresse: “In

 Ibid., l. 2053.  Ibid., ll. 2113 – 2114.  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED20434, see esp. section 5a [last accessed August 24, 2016].  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 2129 – 2135.  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=byte&byte=173474980&egdisplay=compact [last accessed August 24, 2016]. David Watt argues that the Regement is rather short in comparison to other compilations or translations of Latin Fürstenspiegel texts, probably because Hoccleve, unlike other authors, chose to compile only selected parts of his source texts. This compact format, so Watt, possibly made the Regement such a popular text in the 15th century: David Watt, “Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” in A Companion to Fifteenth-Century English Poetry, ed. by Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2013), pp. 49 – 50.

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the name of Jhesu, wirke aftir the avys / That I compyle out of thise auctours olde.”⁶³ So while Hoccleve propagates the high value of the Regement’s sources through stressing their age, referring to their popularity and their innate wisdom and knowledge, he at the same time repeats again and again what exactly his part in the process is: translating and, more importantly, compiling selected passages. And his role as compiler comes up again at the end of the Regement, when Hoccleve’s envoy is rubricated with the words “Words of the Compiler to His Book”. All these strategies create the idea of a transparent authorial plan and procedure for the text’s creation. But it is not only the conception of the text, and especially its past, that is evoked through the descriptions in the narrator’s dialogue with the Old Man. What is more, readers also get to know the material side of the text that they are reading. The passages examined so far, the descriptions of the writing process and the discussion of the three sources, all occur around the break from prologue to main part. This break is the most interesting passage with regards to the autobiographical elements of the Regement, because it is at this turning point when several time levels are opened up, and it is at this point, too, that roles in the production process are laid open before the reader, who gets the chance to get involved. A step back is necessary to fully grasp how the prologue as a whole is structured regarding tense of narration. The prologue begins with the narrator telling us in past tense about his sleepless state, his walk outside of the city, and his meeting and dialogue with the Old Man. It ends with his plan to write a text for Prince Henry. The narrator describes in minute detail how he comes home, sits down, and then the first part of the prologue ends with the following words: “Unto my lord the Prince thus I wroot:”⁶⁴ It is at this point, that the narrator turns into an author, or to be more precise, he becomes the intra-textual author of the rest of the prologue and the Regement proper. This textual break is accompanied by a structural one: most manuscripts start the new section with an elaborate initial, a floral border or some other structural means of division. A few manuscripts have a presentation picture, which will be discussed below. What comes after the break is often rubricated with either “Verba compilatoris ad Regem” or “Hic incipit prologus de Principum regimine”.⁶⁵ The text fol-

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 2188 – 2189.  Ibid., l. 2016.  The latter gloss shows that the Regement’s parts had no fixed headings: the words of the compiler to the prince were sometimes seen as part of what I call the prologue (ll. 1– 2157), and in other manuscripts these 140 lines alone were referred to as a prologue.

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lowing then mirrors this break, as its tense changes from past to present. And instead of narrating the dialogue to an unspecific audience, the narrator now clearly addresses the prince: “I, humble servant […] / Me recommande unto your worthynesse”.⁶⁶ Here, a first temporal rupture occurs: for the reader – for every reader, in fact – the actual reading of these lines is concurrent with the imagined writing on the morning after a sleepless night as these words are not only a direct address to the prince, but also the first words of the now intra-textual author. Both levels, the actual present of reading, and the fictional present of writing, coincide. In a way, then, reading the narrator’s words to the prince is an actualisation of the writing process – one that recurs with every new reading. This puts the reader into the narrator’s position, making her / him part of the writing process, as the narrator’s self-description “I, humble servant” becomes the reader’s potential self-description “I, humble servant”. This concurrence of reading and writing may in some readers even create some kind of emotional investment in the text’s following main part. A second temporal level opens up as actual reader and implied reader merge. The implied reader, Prince Henry, is addressed several times explicitly, and it becomes clear that the text is written for his eyes. Every actual reader becomes aware of this implied audience and puts him- or herself into relation with the prince and the imagined moment of his reading, which, if it happened at all, must have been later than the first temporal level of writing the Regement proper. In this passage, the text offers access to different time levels, and at the same time, the roles of everybody involved in this particular case of literary communication are made explicit and, at least in part, change: the narrator turns into an intra-textual author – and the reader gets the chance to accompany him in this transformation; the prince as the implied reader enters the textual stage – and the reader again feels to be part of this, reading alongside the prince when he is addressed over and over again. In a clever move, the text creates temporal levels which at the same time lay open the roles of the personae involved in the text’s production and reception. This is done in a way that is most tangible for the reader, who is able to take on different roles: in the fictional present, we can sharpen our imaginary pen and look at the parchment in front of us with the author’s eyes; in a fictional time slightly after the writing of the text, we are addressed simultaneously with Prince Henry; in the actual present(s) of every particular reader, we look at the text with the eyes of a later reader who is being made aware of the time that has passed since the original composition of the text, to which access still is granted.

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 2017– 2022.

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Seen in combination, the purposeful planning of the text before it is written (in its past) as well as the temporal concurrency of the reading and writing processes at the beginning of the main part (its present) might also create a feeling of textual stability, which, on second thought, turns out to be a paradox: the temporal connection between the reader and the narrator sitting down and starting to write his address to Prince Henry only holds true at first glance. A closer thought reveals that every manuscript, every edition of the Regement must offer this illusion of an authorial voice, no matter how many scribal changes were made over time in the transmission process, and to everybody who reads. In other words: every version of the text, even if it has been subject to major textual changes, creates this temporal concurrency of every single reader and the author who is about to write the Regement proper. This, of course, exposes the illusion that every manuscript, and indeed every edition, was written by the intra-textual author, who is a fictive persona anyway. And on a more general level, this invalidates the idea that the particular manuscript or edition we read has been in any way controlled by him. The superficially enacted stability that comes with quasi-authorial intention is further destabilised through the second level of autobiography in the Regement, the scribal one, as I will discuss in the following. Numerous descriptions of the narrator’s work as a scribe in the Privy Seal Office create another side of the text’s biography, a side that foreshadows the text’s future. As John Burrow shows, in the Privy Seal Office the narrator’s spheres of life and work coincide as the divisions between them collapse: “[The] distinction between home and office so absolute in modern times, cannot always be clearly drawn”.⁶⁷ And indeed, when asked by the Old Man where he dwells, the narrator’s answer is “In the office of the Privee Seel I wone / And wryte”.⁶⁸ While in the earlier days of Hoccleve scholarship, the detailed descriptions of Hoccleve the narrator’s occupation and life were used as a starting point for tracing the history of the Privy Seal Office, later scholars read Hoccleve’s texts as expressions of bureaucratic identity.⁶⁹ I see the detailed descriptions of his work as a scribe as foreshadowing the dissemination process of the text, which is first and foremost characterised by textual instability.

 Burrow, Thomas Hoccleve, pp. 196 – 197. For more information on the historical living and working arrangements of state clerks see Tout, Chapters in the Administrative History of Mediaeval England, V: The Wardrobe, The Chamber and the Small Seals.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 802– 803.  See especially: Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England.

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In one of the most prominent – and most frequently discussed – passages, Hoccleve talks about the bodily requirements a scribe needs to meet. He names three parts of the body that are most intensely involved in scribal work: the eyes, the hands, and the mind, and – most importantly – a combination of the three: A wryter moot thre thynges to him knytte, And in tho may be no disseverance: Mynde, ye, and hand – noon may from othir flitte, But in hem moot be joynt continuance; The mynde al hool, withouten variance, On yi and hand awayte moot alway, And they two eek on him, it is no nay. Whoso shal wryte, may nat holde a tale With him and him, ne synge this ne that; But al his wittes hoole, grete and smale Ther muste appeere and holden hem therat; And syn he speke may ne synge nat, But bothe two he needes moot forbere, His labour to him is the elengere. Thise artificers see I day by day, In the hootteste of al hir bysynesse, Talken and synge and make game and play, And foorth hir labour passith with gladnesse; But we laboure in travaillous stilnesse; We stowpe and stare upon the sheepes skyn, And keepe moot our song and wordes yn. ⁷⁰

The first stanza names the three required faculties and stresses how important it is that they work together. After this, the next two stanzas, which form a unit, very much elaborate on the ability to concentrate and not be distracted by songs or chatter. The text here makes it quite clear that distraction is strictly forbidden, and that, as a result, the scribes’ work feels even longer and more boring. Other scholars read this passage as emphasising the ever-looming boredom of Hoccleve’s occupation⁷¹ or as describing “the way in which psychic and bodily unity is bought at the price of social isolation and physical pain.”⁷² I think that there is an additional aspect at play here: What the text does not explicitly men-

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 995 – 1015, my emphasis.  For example Steven Justice, “Inquisition, Speech, and Writing: A Case from Norwich,” in Criticism and Dissent in the Middle Ages, ed. by Rita Copeland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 296.  Patterson, “”What is me?”: Hoccleve and the Trials of the Urban Self,” p. 104.

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tion, is why concentration and focus are so essential, or what the consequences would be if they were missing. Implicitly, the text explains why concentration is so important for the scribes’ work: The three requirements – the eyes, the hands and the mind which holds them all together – are the components that are necessary for writing correctly: should the eyes fail to see properly, words will be misread and thus misspelled or missed altogether. The same goes for the hands: if they are unreliable, the written text might be faulty or illegible. The results of a distracted mind amount to the same effect. So both bodily decay and lack of concentration result in faulty texts. Two phrases in this passage especially strengthen the idea that scribal errors are a central point here. First, line 999 reads: “The mynde al hool, withouten variance”. This, of course, refers to the need to focus on the text and not allow “variance” in thought, but it also alludes to unwanted variance in texts that comes from a lack of focus. The second phrase follows a few lines later: when the narrator talks about watching workmen sing and chatter, he says that “We stowpe and stare upon the sheepes skyn / And keepe moot our song and wordes yn”.⁷³ What looks like yet another complaint about the boredom inherent in his work stresses not only the forbidden distraction that would arise from the singing and chatting, but also the need to concentrate, to “stare upon the sheepes skyn”, and to refrain from uttering own words and songs, lest they mix with the given words of the texts that are to be copied. What is implied again is the consequences of singing and having fun at work. Repeatedly, Hoccleve describes different scenarios that lead to production of erroneous text: singing, chatting, lack of concentration, faulty eyes and other bodily problems. These detailed descriptions not only make the reality of writing and copying tangible in an almost literal sense; they also make us aware that there are many things that contribute to a text diverging from its exemplar, so many, indeed, that it seems almost impossible to actually create a perfect copy. Repeatedly, the text emphasises that we are reading about not just any author, but rather about a scribe-turned-author. It is impossible to overlook the numerous references to the daily routine in the Privy Seal Office, the unoriginality of the office writing, and the fact that the narrator and his colleagues are frequently cheated out of their wages by the servants of lords who keep the scribes’ payment for themselves. The narrator thus places himself firmly in a scribal environment. This becomes even clearer when the narrator talks about the three bodily problems that arise from scribal work. This passage directly follows the passage cited earlier about the three bodily requirements. Even if the three parts of the body in each passage do not correspond (the three parts described

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 1014– 1015.

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as necessary requirements are mind, eyes, and hands, while the three parts most affected by the work are stomach, back and – again – eyes), the two passages are still to be seen as corresponding. The first one starts with the words “A wryter moot thre thynges to him knytte”,⁷⁴ and exactly three stanzas later, the second passage starts with “Wryting also dooth grete annoyes thre”. It is worth quoting these two stanzas in full here. Wrytyng also dooth grete annoyes thre, Of which ful fewe folkes taken heede Sauf we ourself, and thise, lo, they be: Stommak is oon, whom stowpynge out of dreede Annoyeth sore; and to our bakkes neede Moot it be grevous; and the thridde oure yen Upon the whyte mochil sorwe dryen. What man that three and twenti yeer and more In wrytynge hath continued, as have I, I dar wel seyn, it smertith him ful sore In every veyne and place of his body; And yen moost it greeveth, treewely, Of any craft that man can ymagyne. Fadir, in feith, it spilt hath wel ny myne.⁷⁵

This description of the painful consequences of working as a scribe adds a third temporal dimension to the ones established earlier. In addition to the past prologue and the concurrency of the words of the compiler to the prince, this passage describes, albeit not in the future tense, the later life of every person who spends their time copying and writing. The future ailments and pains are described as an inescapable development for every scribe, hence also for the narrator himself. For him, who claims to have spent twenty-three years at the Privy Seal, this laid-out future may already be the painful present state of his life. But more importantly, as the text here states that a suffering scribe’s eyes are affected most heavily, just a few stanzas after stating that eyes are one important component for correct and faithful copying, this section can only be read as stressing the inevitability of making mistakes and introducing errors into a text. As a consequence, texts are prone to instability. In fact, as we learn that this narrator and intra-textual author of the text we are reading suffers from eyes that are nearly ruined as he is in the process of writing said text (“Fadir, in feith it

 Ibid., l. 995.  Ibid., ll. 1016 – 1029.

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spilt hath wel ny myne [eyes, E.K.]”),⁷⁶ the instability is, one could say, already inscribed into this text in the truest sense of the word. We should thus doubt the accuracy and reliability of this text from its very beginning. The text here gives several reasons – old age, lack of concentration – why the danger of scribes making mistakes and thus changing the text, is already part of every copying process. It has become clear that the text here simulates two aspects of its own biography. Texts describing and emphasising how their authors allegedly created them are not unique to Hoccleve’s oeuvre. On the contrary, authors’ comments and repeated hints at the writtenness of their texts were quite common: In his prologue to Book I of the Confessio Amantis, Gower spends some time discussing that he will write his text and how exactly he will go about it.⁷⁷ And Chaucer’s ending to Troilus and Criseyde shows his awareness of the manuscript future of his text when he says “Go, litel bok […] So pray I God that non miswrite the, / Ne the mysmetre for defaute of tonge”.⁷⁸ Chaucer’s Troilus also recurrently stresses its writtenness. The first stanza, for example, ends in “Tesiphone, thow help me for t’endite / Thise woful vers, that wepen as I write.”⁷⁹ The Regement of Princes, however, expands this interest in its own writtenness by inscribing its own materiality – especially its future material state – into the text. The narrator not only describes the procedures of scribal copying and writing, but his descriptions inherently hint at the possibility, even the unavoidability of mistakes that will be made and thus at textual change and variation. The text thus juxtaposes two inherent but partly contradictory features: on the one hand authorial creation (as constructed by the narrator), which – and this is made quite clear in the lengthy discussion of the text’s purpose – has a particular function that has been thought through. On the other hand the production, copying and dissemination of later manuscripts, all of which will necessarily change the text and create variance. This performative contradiction, the author’s care and the scribe’s proneness to making mistakes, is united in the person of the narrator. And, in a second step and on a textual level, both the care and the unavoidable mistakes shape the text itself. The passage about the bodily state of experienced and older scribes vividly describes not only how work affects their health, but, as shown, also mirrors the future of texts that are copied by unfocussed scribes. But in addition, this pas-

 Ibid., l. 1029.  Gower, The English Works of John Gower, prologue to Book I.  Geoffrey Chaucer, “Troilus and Criseyde,” in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by Larry D. Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), ll. 1786 and 1905 – 1786 respectively.  Ibid., ll. 6 – 7.

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sage is also part of a larger picture of a future being drawn especially in the text’s prologue, one that altogether stands for decay and disintegration. This textual future runs parallel to the narrator’s imagined future, which he paints in dark colours: financial problems and worries about his future life keep him awake, because he is afraid that he will spend his last years in poverty. I would like to argue, however, that it is not only the narrator’s potentially impoverished future that the text here implies, but actually his death. And again, the death of the narrator persona has parallels on a textual basis.

2.2 The Death of the Narrator: Thomas Hoccleve’s Dissolution into his Text In the course of the prologue, the narrator’s biography loses in significance while the text’s biography gains in importance and becomes ever clearer as a textual dimension. Corresponding to this development, the relation between text and narrator changes. At first sight, the narrator seems to be very much in control of the story he is telling, and of the biography he is creating: as he constructs his own life along the lines of the empirical Thomas Hoccleve’s life quite early in the text, the autobiographical detail makes him appear almost like a feasible person to readers who know that his real-life doppelgänger did actually exist. And in addition, the open and unconcerned way in which the narrator talks about his life and his business of writing seems to suggest that we are truly encountering a narrator who creates and thus determines the text in its form. At second glance, however, it becomes clear that the life of the narrator is always also a performative exploitation in service of the text and its biography. And in the course of the prologue, and even more so after the beginning of the Regement proper, the focus of the text changes: While the autobiographical elements at first sight seem to describe the life of the narrator only and thus motivate the creation of the mirror for princes, over time the writing and copying of the text comes to play an ever more significant role. D. C. Greetham touches on this point when he argues that the narrator’s insecurities regarding his authorial abilities can be read as more than just adherence to the humility topos: [W]here others see the deference, humility, and self-castigation as betraying a lack of confidence in the composer, I would see it as an early comment on the problems of composition – indeed, on the art of narration itself, which now becomes not just a device for getting

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the story moving or for unifying the disparate sections of a text (as it had largely been in Chaucer) but the proper, and perhaps the only, subject for the artist – his own work.⁸⁰

So while the narrator is indeed talking about himself, describing his linguistic inabilities and creative weaknesses, Greetham argues, this is done not so much out of adherence to the humility topos, but for the sake of discussing the question of which skills are needed to make a good text. I would go a step further and argue that these descriptions of textual production are not only discussions of authorial activity on a meta-textual level, but that they create the text’s biography in the first place and, in a second step, make its author disappear. In other words, one could say that the textual biography is made possible through an (intra-textual) authorial autobiography, so that the latter serves the development of the former. The narrator, as the text creates its own past, present and future ceases to be the centre of our attention, as the text’s materiality is emphasised. This works not only on the textual level, but can also be seen in one of the two major images of the Regement, its so-called presentation picture. ⁸¹ It suffices to say here that in two manuscripts, the presentation miniature shows Thomas Hoccleve presenting a book to Prince Henry. In Arundel 38 especially, both the prince and Hoccleve are drawn in much detail and splendour, but it is the book that stands out to the viewer. Not only is it painted in the spatial centre of the image, but it also draws our attention as it is painted in red and is thus the most obtrusive object in the illustration. To come back to the text: In a parallel way to the painting, the text replaces the narrator as the centre of attention. To speak of the narrator’s death may sound too metaphorical at first, but in fact his death is alluded to repeatedly throughout the prologue. When the narrator bemoans his future financial insecurity (and the state of the world in general), he repeatedly wishes to be dead instead of having to face this troublesome future. More than ten examples for this topos of the textual persona that would rather die than live in agony can be found in the prologue. Interestingly, most of them are situated in the last lines of a stanza and thus at the end of a sense unit, which emphasises the idea of death: For example: “But how I shal be gyed / Heeraftir, whan that I no lenger serve – / This hevyeth me so that I wel ny sterve.”⁸² The narrator’s

 Greetham, “Self-Referential Artifacts: Hoccleve’s Persona as a Literary Device,” p. 244.  The presentation picture in all its versions will be discussed at length in Chapter 4, for an image of the presentation picture in two versions see Figs. 8 and 9.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 831– 833. Other lines are: l. 14, l. 21, l. 70, l. 112, l. 838, l. 868, l. 931, l. 952, l. 973.

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death is mentioned and wished for to a degree where it becomes a prominent aspect in the text. And when, towards the end of the passage, the narrator refers to the three bodily worries and states that these future ailments are already present for him, it becomes clear that this future death may not be too far ahead. Ethan Knapp calls this list of three bodily ailments an “anatomical fragmentation”.⁸³ As the narrator constantly refers to his own death throughout the prologue, this motif spills over to the whole prologue, where this anatomical disintegration takes place on several levels: On the one level, the narrator’s bodily ailments as well as his death-wish describe the anatomical fragmentation Knapp refers to. But on another level, the disintegration of the textual body might be referred to just the same. Because just like a human body that is faced with several ailments will ultimately die and decompose, textual instability may lead to a form of textual defragmentation that runs parallel to the narrator’s disintegrating body. And the fact that these death-wishes are often uttered in the last lines of a stanza evokes yet another connection to scribal behaviour and the disintegration of a textual body: In the process of copying a text, the layout of a text is ultimately a scribe’s choice. So by deciding to separate stanzas through spaces, the narrator’s wish to die is moved to the last line of a separate unit and thus gains in emphasis. One could say that scribes stress and thus advance the narrator’s death. Content and form here perform towards the same end, which is the death of the narrator. So on the one hand the biography described changes and increasingly focuses on the text’s instead of the narrator’s life. And on the other, the narrator figure utters the wish to die and seems to disintegrate both in body and textually. With the break from prologue to main part, the person Thomas Hoccleve, both as an intra-textual author and as a scribe, almost completely ceases to play a role. As his narrating voice in the Regement proper is much less perceptible, one can speak of an actual, a bodily death that is repeatedly foreshadowed, as well as a textual death the narrator is dying. This makes the text fulfil the function of memoria. As the narrator’s old age, his fear of growing old in poverty, and his wished-for death are repeatedly alluded to in the prologue (both in his worries and through his alter ego and personified potential future, the Old Man), the reader gets the impression that this Regement is possibly the last feat achieved by this weary narrator. In other words, this text may be the last witness of the living Hoccleve and – as no children of his are

 Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England, p. 91.

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mentioned – the only one. The memoria function of texts is also made quite explicit when throughout the Regement, several references to Chaucer and Gower and their works are made. In some manuscripts these references are even supplemented by a portrait of Chaucer.⁸⁴ In one of the several Chaucer eulogies, textual memoria is discussed again: O maistir deere and fadir reverent, My maistir Chaucer, flour of eloquence, Mirour of fructuous entendement, O universel fadir in science! Allas that thow thyn excellent prudence In thy bed mortel mightiest nat byqwethe! What eiled deeth? Allas, why wolde he sle the? O deeth, thow didest nat harm singular In slagthre of him, but al this land it smertith. But nathelees yit hatow no power His name slee; his hy vertu astertith Unslayn fro thee, which ay us lylfly hertith With books of his ornate endyting That is to al this land enlumynyng. Hastow nat eek my maistir Gower slayn, Whos vertu I am insufficient For to descryve? I woot wel in certain, For to sleen al this this world thow hast yment.⁸⁵

It is not the narrator’s death that is described here, but that of the two authors who probably influenced Thomas Hoccleve the most: Geoffrey Chaucer and John Gower. These eighteen lines feature the word slen in different grammatical forms six times. Death, even though he may have killed Chaucer the person, has “no power to kill his name”, and, to emphasise this again, Chaucer’s “hy vertu”, in other words, his mental and imaginative power and value, cannot be slayn. His everlasting “vertu” is materialised in “bookes of his ornat endytyng” which will always (“ay”) please us. A parallel passage, accompanying the famous Chaucer portrait, also bemoans Chaucer’s death and then speaks of his works: “In thyn honour [i. e. the Virgin Mary, E.K.] he wroot ful many a lyne”.⁸⁶ So while Chaucer himself may be gone, his texts will bear witness of his existence. And finally, at the very end of the Regement proper, the compiler  The portrait of Geoffrey Chaucer and its relation to the accompanying text passages will be subject of Chapter 4.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 1961– 1978.  Ibid., l. 4987.

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speaks to his book and states that “But o thyng woot I wel, go wher thow go, / I am so pryvee unto thy sentence, / Thow haast and art and wilt been everemo / To his hynesse of swich benevolence, […]”.⁸⁷ It is not only the longevity of his text, in this case of the Regement of Princes, that is emphasised here. Especially the line “I am so pryvee unto thy sentence” stresses the intimacy of author and text. This, in turn, means that wherever the book goes – and it is made clear that it will go places – , its narrator will always be a part of it and thus survive in and through the survival of his book. In other words, books are the only place where authors have the chance to be remembered. That the text here presents literary production as a way to be remembered long after one’s death takes on a whole different meaning when seen in the context of the textual biography and especially the future that is foretold for every text. In this future, the Regement in its material form will be exposed to such destructive forces that it will necessarily be characterised by instability and variance. As a result, its effectiveness as serving the memoria of Thomas Hoccleve must be seen in a less than positive light. How can this paradox be interpreted? Read in a negative light, the contradiction of memoria function and future instability might be a pessimistic assessment of a text’s capability to provide this memoria effect in the first place. As the Regement repeatedly claims that texts save their authors from being forgotten, but also laments the instability which inflicts texts in their dissemination, its bottom line may be that texts may be hoped to but in fact cannot fulfil this memoria function simply because they are not capable to do so. But reading the contradiction as showing the volatile nature of a person’s literary remembrance, glorification and idealisation also throws a new light on the text’s praises of Chaucer and Gower: they may be feeble attempts of remembrance, attempts that are doomed to be ultimately in vain. And if we apply the changeability of single texts to the literary tradition as whole, this ties in with the inefficient memoria of Chaucer and Gower: authors die and fade into obscurity, new authors supersede them, and altogether, the literary scene changes all the time. So it is not only manuscripts that have to be seen as instable, changing entities of text, but it is the whole literary tradition that is afflicted by a life-like cycle of births and deaths.

 Ibid., ll. 5448 – 5451.

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2.3 The Old Man – a Young Narrator, a Potential Future, and a Personified Textual Function While at first sight, the Old Man seems to be only a counsellor for Thomas Hoccleve the narrator, a closer look shows that there is more to the relationship of the two men. This relationship has been much-discussed. Scholars perceive the Old Man in different ways: Andrew James Johnston describes him as “Hoccleve’s interlocutor, the Old Beggar, a hermit-like figure of authority in the sooth-sayer tradition”.⁸⁸ Others have suggested that the Old Man is Chaucer himself, who visits the dreaming Hoccleve and counsels him in his dream just like he did in real life,⁸⁹ or that he is a Carmelite friar.⁹⁰ I argue that the Old Man also plays a role in the discussion led so far. Like a piece in a puzzle, he supplies information that adds to the construction of the narrator’s life, but at the same time he adds to the life and significance of the text itself – including its political as well as its memoria function. The relation between the Old Man and the narrator becomes the most significant when the latter’s youth is concerned. Interestingly, the Regement of Princes does not have too much to say about this topic. It holds a passage that directly follows the exemplum of John of Canacee. This popular exemplum is about a man who tricks his children into believing that he is rich, only to bequeath them a mace and no money at all. It ends with the text summarizing that there is nothing worse than a person who spends all his / her money freely and relies on the hope that in a later stage of poverty someone will help them out. Then, on a more personal note, the narrator returns to the foreground, in a passage that deserves closer attention: I, Hoccleve, in swich cas am gilty; this me touchith. So seith povert, which on fool large him vouchith. For thogh I nevere were of hy degree, Ne hadde mochil good ne greet richesse, Yit hath the vice of prodigalitee Smerted me sore and doon me hevynesse. He that but lytil hath may doon excesse

 Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 273.  Douglas J. McMillan, “The Single Most Popular of Thomas Hoccleve’s Poems: The Regement of Princes,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 89 (1988): pp. 63 – 71.  Pearsall, “Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes: The Poetics of Royal Self-Representation,” p. 407.

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In his degree as wel as may the ryche, Thogh hir despenses weye nat ylyche. So have I plukkid at my purses strynges And maad hem ofte for to gape and gane That his smal stuf hath take him to his wynges, And hath ysworn to be my welthes bane But if releef away my sorwe plane; And whens it come shal, can I nat gesse, My Lord, but it proceede of your hynesse. I me repente of my misreuled lyf;⁹¹

While the first full stanza (starting with “For thogh I nevere […]”) remains quite general and vague, the second stanza evokes the image of the purse being opened wide and its strings being picked and plucked. The short passage ends with a stanza describing the narrator’s latest financial problems arising from overdue annuities. Whether the past evoked is long gone or recent does not play a role here, what matters is the events and features that are described as belonging to this past. It is exactly these events and features that connect this memory of a past to an earlier passage in the prologue, where the Old Man’s misspent youth is described. Derek Pearsall notices the proximity of the narrator and the Old Man who share similar experiences: “His [i. e. the Old Man’s] own poverty and his confession of youthful misdoing (610 – 65) bring him close to Hoccleve, who thus partakes by implication in the Old Man’s wisdom.”⁹² And Albrecht Classen argues along similar lines when he states that this part of the narrator’s autobiography is doubly filtered, once through the Old Man and then a second time through the latter’s memories.⁹³ Starting in line 610 with the explicit “Whan I was yong […]”,the Old Man describes over eight stanzas and in much more detail how he spent nights at the tavern, playing dice, perjuring and drinking until God punished his misbehaviour and withdrew his superfluity, which lead to the empty purse he so openly shows and discusses: “Come hidir to me, sone, and looke whethir / In this purs ther be any crois or crouche /

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4360 – 4376.  Pearsall, “Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes: The Poetics of Royal Self-Representation,” p. 409.  Classen, Die Autobiographische Lyrik des Europäischen Spätmittelalters: Studien zu Hugo von Montfort, Oswald von Wolkenstein, Antonio Pucci, Charles d’Orléans, Thomas Hoccleve, Michel Beheim, Hans Rosenplüt und Alfonso Alvarez de Villasandino, p. 259. My paraphrase, the orignial reads: “[S]tets erkennt man, daß Hoccleve sich selber porträtiert, auch wenn er es doppelt gebrochen in der Gestalt des Bettlers und dann allein durch dessen Erinnerung an seine Jugend durchführt.”

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Sauf nedel and threde and themel of lethir; / Heer seestow naght that man may handele or touche.”⁹⁴ Reading this as a mere display of the Old Man’s poverty (one that seems to be deliberate or at least welcomed, but still is a dreadful example for the narrator)⁹⁵ does not do justice to the particular parallel between Old Man and narrator. This is not only because the two passages just quoted, the two descriptions of the narrator’s and the Old Man’s unruly past, describe similar experiences and both end in the same result: an empty purse described and displayed in a detailed and almost poetic way. Granted, one could argue that the narrator’s accounts are more general and lack the detail that the Old Man’s story offers. But this detail of Hoccleve the narrator’s life missing in the Regement can easily be found in another of his autobiographical poems: “La Male Regle”. Here, we again encounter a narrator who presents himself as Thomas Hoccleve as he talks about returning “hoom to the Priuee Seel”⁹⁶ and places himself in a realistically narrated work environment by naming his colleagues and giving London place names. His wrongdoings in his own misspent youth are described in just as much detail as the youth of the Old Man in the Regement, using the same set piece elements as a tavern, wine, women, ignored warnings from friends, repentance in later life, etc.⁹⁷ So while the Regement’s narrator is hesitant in talking about his misspent youth in detail, this gap can be filled taking the narrator of “La Male Regle” into account. But the Old Man offers another alternative of providing detail for the kind of misdeeds committed by the narrator. The connection between these two figures is thus strengthened, which not only influences our perception of the narrator’s youth, but which also makes Hoccleve’s future poverty a more likely possibility (considering that this is where the Old Man ended). A. C. Spearing, in his study of the Regement’s prologue, states that “Hoccleve’s Old Man is a warning of what the future may hold for Hoccleve himself is he does not find a remedy for his poverty, a projection of his fear of a destitute old age”.⁹⁸ So the Regement not only merges temporal levels, but in addition also personal – and, considering the parallel to “La Male  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 680 – 683.  Derek Pearsall suggests that the Old Man is a Carmelite monk, in other words: a beggar monk, Pearsall, “Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes: The Poetics of Royal Self-Representation,” p. 407. A more detailed discussion of the issue can be found in footnote 63 in Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 273.  Hoccleve, My Compleinte and Other Poems, l. 188.  Roger Ellis’ edition notes the parallels between the passage in “La Male Regle” and ll. 4376 – 89 in the Regement, where the narrator repents his “misreuled lyf”. The parallel between the short poem and the Old Man’s youth, however, goes unnoted: ibid., p. 77– 78 (Notes to the text).  Spearing, Medieval Autographies: The “I” of the Text, p. 154.

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Regle” – textual ones. But it is not only the Old Man’s connection to the narrator, but also his relation to the text itself that deserves a closer look here. As I will show in the following section, the Old Man and his life are not only significant for the narrator’s biography, but they also relate to the text itself and comment on its political function. The prologue to the Regement proper bears elements of a dream vision as well as a Boethian dialogue: the narrator wanders around not in a dream, but, one could argue, in a dream-like haze of sleeplessness. On meeting the Old Man, it immediately transpires that the latter is a figure of guidance as well as a confessor: in the first few sentences the two men exchange, the Old Man orders the narrator to “Wirke aftir me: it shal be for thy prow”,⁹⁹ talks about his “lore”¹⁰⁰ and offers himself as a “gyde”.¹⁰¹ Age, as an allegory, stands for wisdom in medieval literature, especially when dealing and discussing with an ignorant youth. The Old Man in the prologue repeatedly emphasises his function as a counsel-giver and, indeed, the exempla he cites and the advice he gives support his role as a figure of experience and knowledge.¹⁰² As such a figure, his function is to help and guide the narrator in his problematic situation, which he does with patience and a proper set of counselling suggestions. One could even say that in his attempt to help the narrator and in telling him about his sinful youth, the Old Man becomes an exemplum himself, one that is supposed to show how not to lead your life in times of superfluity. In posing as a personified exemplum, the Old Man merges with the Regement, at least in function. The text being a mirror for princes, the basic idea inherent in its genre is to counsel and give advice on how to lead a virtuous life.

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 145.  Ibid., l. 191.  Ibid., p. 210. Larry Scanlon sums up the Old Man’s generic connections quite nicely when he states that “[a]s authoritative interlocutor, the beggar’s antecedent is Gower’s Genius, and the diverse allegorical tradition of similar figures. He acts for much of the dialogue like a confessor, prompting Hoccleve to reveal his state of mind, interrogating him about his beliefs and habits and offering him moral counsel”, Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition, p. 304.  In an essay about the Chaucer portrait, Peter Brown identifies the Old Man not only as a figure of guidance, but also draws a parallel to Chaucer himself: “The old man has been variously identified as almsman, go-between, surrogate for Hoccleve, alter ego, truth-teller, Carmelite friar and academic doctor. But such is the consanguinity of the Chaucer in Hoccleve’s portrait and the old man in the prologue to the Regiment of Princes that the latter might be thought of, if not as an animated version of the former, at least as a figure with strong affinities.”, Peter Brown, “Images,” in A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c.1350-c.1500, ed. by Peter Brown (Malden and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), pp. 316 – 317.

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The parallel between text and Old Man becomes apparent in the emphases put on the counselling function both have. But how are we to evaluate the function of a counselling text dedicated to a prince, when the intra-textual parallel, the counselling person, is not the most presentable of men? From the outset, the narrator’s first meeting with the Old Man stresses his poverty and tattered looks, as he is described as “A poore old hoor man”,¹⁰³ who owns nothing more than what he is wearing.¹⁰⁴ I argue here that the text’s descriptions of the Old Man create an additional aspect of the text’s future life. The Old Man’s shabby appearance and poverty tie in with the instability and diversity that is to be expected in future manuscripts. It is important, however, that the characterisation of the Old Man clearly differentiates between his outer appearance and his inner values, i. e. his wit and his intentions. While he is described as looking poor and ragged on the outside, his wisdom, coming with good intentions, is unimpaired. The division of outer and inner state are made the topic of the two men’s conversation very early in the prologue when the Old Man addresses the seemingly sleeping narrator and tries to initiate a conversation with him. The narrator reacts impatiently and tells his counterpart to leave him alone: “Petir, good man, thogh we talke heer til eeve, / Al is in veyn; thy might may nat atteyne / To hele me, swich is my woful peyne.” The Old Man reacts with a warning: “What that I may or can ne woost thow noght.”¹⁰⁵ And a few lines further down, a similar passage makes the Old Man’s point even clearer: I woot wel, sone, of me thus wilt thow thynke: This olde dotid grisel halt him wys; […] But thogh I old and hoor be, sone myn, And poore be my clothynge and array, And nat so wyde a gowne have as is thyn – So smal ypynchid ne so fressh and gay – My reed in hap yit thee profyte may, And likly that thow deemest for folie Is gretter wysdam than thow canst espie. Undir an old poore habyt regneth ofte Greet vertu, thogh it moustre poorely.¹⁰⁶

   

Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 122. Ibid., l. 672. Ibid., ll. 180 – 183. Ibid., ll. 400 – 415.

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The text here warns the ignorant addressee of counsel not to underestimate the wisdom of a man who looks tattered and poor. The maxim not to judge a book by its cover, together with the clear division of outer vs. inner values, is transferred from the Old Man to the Regement itself. We find this idea again, this time in connection to the text rather than the Old Man: towards the end of the prologue, at the beginning of the main part, which starts out with an address to the prince, and then again at the end of the text, in the envoy, the narrator repeatedly emphasises the purpose and goodwill inherent in the text. They are not only his own good intentions, but are markedly those of the text, which is best exemplified in the lines addressed from the narrator to the text itself: “Thow haast and art and wilt been everemo / To his hynesse of swich benevolence, / Thogh thow nat do him due reverence / In wordes, thy cheertee nat is the lesse.”¹⁰⁷ At the same time, and corresponding to the Old Man’s appearance, the text may be encountered in a form that is just as tattered and worn on the outside. This may refer to the outer materiality of the text, its binding or the lack of illumination and embellishment. It may, however, also stand for the bad handwriting or even for textual instability. But even if the book itself may look ragged, and even if the text may be changed in its form and content, so the narrator assures us, its intention and worth will never change and should never be perceived to depend on its outer appearance. That the Regement itself may look less glamorous might come from future scribal (mis‐) behaviour, but it might also be inherent in its original form, as hinted at in the envoy, the words of the compiler to the text. Here, the narrator addresses the book in a way that bears a striking resemblance to those famous words of the Troilus narrator, “Go, litel book, go […]”.¹⁰⁸ In the Regement, the narrator also addresses his “litil book”¹⁰⁹ and asks: “who gaf thee hardynesse / Thy wordes to pronounce in the presence / Of kynges ympe and princes worthynesse”.¹¹⁰ In the very last stanza of this envoy (and of the Regement altogether), the narrator comments on the text’s less than perfect state: Byseeche him of his gracious noblesse Thee holde excusid of thyn innocence Of endytynge, and with hertes meeknesse, If anythyng thee passe of negligence, Byseeche him of mercy and indulgence, And that for thy good herte he be nat fo

   

Ibid., ll. 5450 – 5453. Chaucer, “Troilus and Criseyde,” Book V, l. 1786. Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 5440. Ibid., ll. 5540 – 5543.

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To thee that al seist of loves fervence; That knowith He Whom nothyng is hid fro. ¹¹¹

The characteristics ascribed to the text here are first of all an “innocence of endytynge”, a composition that can be described as simple. Secondly, the narrator deems it possible that “anythyng passe of negligence”, that negligence may pass the text and change it in passing, which foreshadows the text’s future encounters with scribes, readers, and owners who will all contribute to it. But, and this is one of the last textual image that remains with the reader at the close of the text: the Regement has a “good herte”, and, what is more, the text’s good intentions are obvious to God, “Whom nothyng is hid fro.” The text’s good heart, similar to the Old Man’s competence and good will, are not obvious, they are hidden under a layer of simple writing and scribal changes (in the text’s case) and poor clothing (in the Old Man’s case). So the Old Man at the same time fills a gap in the narrator’s biography – his youth – and depicts a potential future version of the narrator, one of poverty. Additionally, as he is portrayed as old and poor, the text in its possibly shabby future appearance is foreshadowed. But the Old Man’s wisdom and his function as counsel-giver and his being a personified exemplum mirrors the text’s didactic function as well as its good intentions. This division of the text’s inner vs. its outer qualities adds a second, a somewhat more positive reading to the matter of the Regement’s memoria function (discussed in 2.2 above). Rather than perceiving the manuscript context as an influence that ultimately renders a text incapable of fulfilling this memoria function, one could say that the destabilising effect only touches the outside of a text and thus leaves the inside, its value and message, untouched. So its layout may be corrupted, its appearance and style simple and some of its words may be misspelled and sentences misplaced. But its inner qualities, like Chaucer’s “vertu” – which ultimately feed the text’s purpose of memoria – are not afflicted by this decay and remain meaningful and unharmed. This chapter has shown that the Regement of Princes, especially its prologue, creates several biographies. The life of the narrator who describes in detail not only his financial worries, but also his work at the Privy Seal Office and the procedure of planning and writing the Regement create not only insight into his own life, but they also construct a textual biography. This textual biography is further supported by the figure of the Old Man, whose youth fills in a missing piece in the narrator’s life, but who additionally personifies the text’s function of giving counsel. The narrator’s walk after a sleepless night which triggers the writing of

 Ibid., ll. 5456 – 5463 [highlights are my own].

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the Regement (representing the past), the writing process itself (present), the instability of old and ill scribes as well as the narrator’s looming death and the Old Man’s pitiful state (future), all these elements make up a past, present and future life for the text. The future of the text, just like the future the narrator pictures for himself, is characterised by instability. The biographies, created in the Regement develop in relation to each other, and in the end they form a full circle: in the beginning, the narrator is the one in charge of the planning and creation of the text in a very thought-through way. He seems to be in control completely. But as the prologue progresses, the textual biography he created gains in importance. And similar to the narrator’s future, which looks sad and full of decay and, ultimately, death, the text seems to face a similar end. But at this point, human and textual biographies diverge: even though humans die, a text may be changed, but in its core lives on. This is exemplified in the Old Man and his connection not only to the narrator, but also to the Regement of Princes and its political function of counselling Prince Henry. The circle is closed by the memoria function ascribed to the text: its contents, its inner values and “vertu”, are the only place where the narrator will survive. So through his life, a biography for the text is created, and after he has faded into the text and died, the text will be the only reminder of the narrator’s life, the only thing that is left to remind later readers of him. Here, the Old Man and the role he is playing both in the narrator’s and the text’s lives became significant again. I have argued that the Old Man not only fills in gaps in the narrator’s biography, but he is also a parallel for the text itself, as they share the purpose of giving counsel. Here, the Old Man’s outer appearance is another example for how the text describes its own future state in a performative way. This reading of the Regement’s autobiographical elements corroborates Janet Wolff’s assertions that a text like any work of art does not simply express ideas per transposition. Rather, “[t]he actual material conditions of artistic production, technological and institutional, mediate this expression and determine its particular form in the cultural product”.¹¹² It also adds a further layer to this postulation: material conditions do not only determine the form and content of the work of art, they can also be mediated, discussed and foreshadowed in it.

 Wolff, The Social Production of Art, p. 63.

3 “That text I undirstonde thus alwey”¹: Glosinge in the Regement of Princes An excursion to the Middle English Dictionary is necessary to define the limits of this chapter. The members of the word family consisting of the Middle English verb glosen,² the nouns glose ³ and gloser,⁴ and the present progressive form glosinge,⁵ all have the same range of meaning. This range can be described best as comprising three semantic groups. The first group is the act of commenting on and interpreting text: A gloser is a glossator, a glose is a commentary or interpretation, and to glosen means to describe. The second group is related to the first, but comes with a negative connotation: here, a glose is a “deceitful commentary” or a “specious interpretation”, and to glosen means “to obscure the truth of a matter”. The third group of meaning takes this negative connotation even further: here, a gloser is a “flatterer”, to glosen means to “speak with blandishment, flattery, or deceit”, and the noun glose denotes the “pursuit of favor by adulation”. The Middle English glose thus can denote a rather value-free and – at least in its attempt – objective commentary, but also deliberate deceit, as well as anything in between. Especially in the late Middle Ages, glossing, both the word and the activity, was additionally fraught with a religious set of problems: the Lollard movement questioned not only the Church’s privilege to read, preach, and interpret biblical texts, but actively worked towards vernacular religious writings, spreading literacy among the laity in order to give it access to religious discussions.⁶ Just how influential John Wyclif and his followers were is shown in Archbishop Thomas Arundel’s Constitutions, which can be read as a reaction to the spread of Lollard ideas not only in the laity, but throughout society as a whole.⁷ In their endeavour

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 5185.  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED18852 [last accessed August 24, 2016].  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=id&id=MED18851 [last accessed August 24, 2016].  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?size=First+100&type=orths&q1=gloser&rgxp= constrained [last accessed August 24, 2016].  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?size=First+100&type=orths&q1=glo singe&rgxp=constrained [last accessed August 24, 2016].  Steven Justice, “Lollardy,” in The Cambridge History in Medieval English Literature, ed. by David Wallace. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 666 – 668.  John of Gaunt’’s support of John Wyclif as well as courtly figures such as Sir John Oldcastle show just how much Lollardy was part of the nobility. DOI 10.1515/9783110523089-003

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to translate the books of the Bible into the English vernacular for everyman to read, the Wycclifites attempted to sever the texts of Scripture from the glosses that Church had added over the centuries. They were interested in the literal meaning of the Bible and, basically, each text,⁸ rather than in the Church’s interpretation of the text. William Tyndale, 16th-century translator of the New Testament, proposes in his preface to the New Testament “to arm the reader against false prophets and malicious hypocrites, whose perpetual study is to leaven the Scripture with glosses, and there to lock it up where it should save thy soul, and to make us shoot at a wrong mark, to put our trust in those things that profit their bellies only and lay our souls.”⁹ The word “glosen” played an important role in the religious conflicts revolving around Lollardy: on the one hand, it describes the orthodox clerical process of interpreting, summarising and explaining, defended against the heretical demand that the Church give up exactly this privilege. On the other hand, the same terminology was used in Lollard tracts with a much more negative connotation. The MED lists an entry of the verb “glosen” and quotes from the Wycliffite tract “De Dominio Divino”, which starts with the words “Siþ many falce gloseris maken goddis lawe & kepen it; of siche falce gloseris schulde ech man be war.”¹⁰ Hoccleve’s texts show an awareness of this development and an attitude that scholars commonly define as “orthodox”.¹¹ His short poem “Adress to Sir John Oldcastle”, sometimes also called “Remonstrance Against Oldcastle”, written in 1415, bears witness to this. Sir John Oldcastle was a prominent Lollard in the early fifteenth century, who escaped prosecution. In his poem, Hoccleve begs Oldcastle to remember his knightly origins and return not only to the bosom of the Holy Roman Church, but more importantly to the worldly duties that come with his noble lineage.¹² The “Remonstrance” openly defends the Church’s exclusive right to gloss, i. e. to interpret:

 Rita Copeland, Pedagogy, Intellectuals, and Dissent in the Later Middle Ages: Lollardy and Ideas of Learning. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001, pp. 99 – 101.  Preface to Tyndale’s translation of the New Testament, quoted in Lawton, David, “Englishing the Bible,” in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. by David Wallace, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 460.  John Wyclif, The English Works of Wyclif, ed. by F. D. Matthew. London: Trübner, 1880, p. 284.  Blyth, “Introduction”, p. 8. See also Shannon Gayk’s discussion of Hoccleve’s defence of images in the Regement in her monograph Image, Text and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. 48 – 52.  Lee Patterson briefly but convincingly discusses the “Remonstrance against Oldcastle”, showing that “Hoccleve understands heresy less in terms of religious error than as a deviation

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Oure fadres olde & modres lyued wel, And taghte hir children as hem self taght were Of holy chirche & axid nat a del ‘Why stant his word heere’ and ‘why this word there?’ ‘Why spake god thus and seith thus elles where?’ ‘Why dide he this wyse and might hand do thus?’ Our fadres medled no thyng of swich gere: That oghte been a good mirour to us¹³

Reminding us of a conventional ubi sunt-lament, this stanza emphasises the continuity of learning that comes with parenthood. Thus, it sits well with the overall topic of lineage and alignment into a family that pervades the “Remonstrance” as a whole. But at the same time, it shows that Hoccleve is aware of a text’s potential to be questioned and opened up by different ways of interpreting its meaning. In the Regement, Hoccleve’s anti-Lollard stance is expressed in several passages, one of which is concerned with images depicting saints, discussed in more detail below. When it comes to exegetical readings of authoritative texts, however, the Regement seems to hold an opinion much different from that of the “Remonstrance”: Instead of openly criticising the heretical practice of questioning Scripture and doubting the Church’s official interpretation like the “Remonstrance” does, the Regement shows how far exactly this heretical practice can be taken. This will be discussed in the second part of this chapter. The focus of this chapter are glosses in medieval manuscripts, which are laden with ambiguity, in today’s as much as in medieval discussion. Today’s scholars, when studying glosses in medieval manuscripts, in most cases refer to the commentaries left in the margin or in between the lines of a text, explaining words, referring the reader to sources, or quoting from these sources. In short, the modern word ‘gloss’ is mostly used in a way that seems to have developed from the Middle English glose in the first sense. But Robert W. Hanning notes the ambiguous meaning of the word ‘glossa’, stating that “its lexical meaning and cultural significance varied widely from century to century, language to language, and context to context.”¹⁴ It is exactly this ambiguity in meaning that is of interest in the context of my study. This chapter sets out to address the full

from the selfhood prescribed by society – an understanding almost inevitable for a man who feels himself to be chronically “out of joint.”” “What is me?”, 2001, p. 461.  Hoccleve, “The Remonstrance Against Oldcastle,” in Selections from Hoccleve, ed. by M. C. Seymour (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), p. 65, ll. 153– 160.  Robert W. Hanning, “‘I Shall Fine it in a Maner Glose’: Versions of Textual Harrassment in Medieval Literature,” in Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers, ed. by Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987), p. 27.

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range of meaning of the word glose and, more specifically, the process of glosinge in the Regement. This means that the chapter not only studies marginal glosses that comment on and exert influence over the Middle English text,¹⁵ but it also examines the process of glosinge in the wider Middle English sense, which means interpreting a text and subjecting it to an exegetical reading. As I will show, the activity of glosinge a text – in both senses – is always laden with ambiguity, because in all kinds of glossing, commentary is capable of entering into diverse relations with the text that is glossed. It is this relationship that will be the focus of this study. It is impossible, at least in a study of this scope, to examine all of the roughly two hundred marginal glosses and all examples of sources being discussed throughout the Regement. Rather than compiling a catalogue of all of the Regement’s glosses, this chapter will study a few examples critically and thoroughly. Most glosses will thus be disregarded. An overview of all glosses shows, however, that in many cases the relation between main text and gloss is clear-cut and does not offer itself for critical study. In these cases, the Latin quote in the marginal gloss was translated faithfully into the Middle English main text. They support Marcia Smith Marzec’s assumptions about Hoccleve’s procedure in compiling the Regement. Marzec suggests that Hoccleve, “translating almost verbatim,[…] glossed the English passages straight out of the Latin source as he prepared his text.”¹⁶ One example that suggests this procedure will suffice: In the Regement’s chapter on accepting counsel in all situations (“De consilio habendo in omnibus factis”), the Latin quote “Scriptum est quod consilium bene potest freno comparari”¹⁷ is translated more or less literally into “Conseil may wel be likned to a brydil”.¹⁸ While the standard introductory words “Scriptum est” are ommitted in the Middle English version, the rest of the gloss is translated faithfully, down to the adverb ‘bene’, even though the words are aligned to the patterns of Middle English syntax. What this chapter is interested in are not examples like these, but examples where the relation between Latin gloss and Middle English main text creates tension or ambiguity. And more precisely, those examples will be of interest where the tension created reflects back onto the text as

 In the following chapter, the Middle English text of the Regement will be referred to as the ‘main text’ and the Latin glosses as glosses. This is done for simplicity’s sake and is not meant to imply a hierarchy of importance.  Marzec, “The Latin Marginalia of the Regiment of Princes as an Aid to Stemmatic Analysis,” p. 280.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, p. 246, endnote corresponding to ll. 4929 – 4230.  Ibid., l. 4929.

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a whole and where our perception of the text is changed through looking at this particular relation. The following theses will guide my study: In both senses of the word glosinge, authorities are used in a way that takes their implied purpose – lending authority and supporting one straightforward reading of the text – to a level where this purpose is not served any more. In doing so, these authorities are revealed to be void of meaning and not at all the support which we expect them to be. This has implications for our perception and interpretation of the main text corresponding to these glosses, and of the Regement as a whole. First of all, the text is made ambiguous and a straightforward interpretation is made unlikely, if not impossible. Once we take into account that the text under discussion here is not just any literary text, but a didactic work, this ambiguity becomes much more significant: As the question of authority is taken ad absurdum, so is the text in its function of giving counsel and – in a more abstract way – lending authority. This chapter will focus on two shorter passages and take into account the different kinds of glosinge. In the first part, the practice of fitting glosses in the margins or in between lines of a main text will be examined. I will show how the Regement uses this practice for the purpose of defying a straightforward reading of the text. The second part will take the process of interpreting and – more importantly – misinterpreting a quote into focus and study in how far the Regement uses exegetical strategies, strategies of glosinge, for political purposes. Two passages have been chosen that lend themselves to examinations of these two kinds. In the first of these two case studies, the chapter on accepting counsel (“De consilio habendo in omnibus factis”) will be the object of my discussion. I chose this chapter because it is most likely to play with metafictional elements: it is, after all, a chapter on the acceptance of counsel in all situations, including the counsel that comes from texts like the Regement itself. It repeatedly stresses the importance of counsellors and by doing so, inherently justifies the Regement and strengthens the role of the narrator who is, after all, a counsellor, too. As a chapter that on a metafictional level discusses its own applicability and at the same time talks about the relation of narrator and addressee – Thomas Hoccleve and Prince Henry –, this chapter lends itself to a discussion of how authorities are employed, both in the chapter and in the Regement as a whole. The second case study will be concerned with the so-called debate on female maistrie, which is part of the last chapter in the Regement: “On Peace” (“De pace”). Here, not only do we find marginal glosses that stand in a relation to the main text that is full of tension. Moreover, the text discusses the topic of female superiority by propounding quotations from authoritative sources in a way that renders this practice void of meaning. It is an example of glosinge in the second sense.

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On Authority This chapter takes those cases of glosinge into focus in which the relation of Middle English text and (mostly) Latin authoritative text is filled with tension. Relations of these kinds have been studied from different perspectives. Therefore, any attempt to conceptualise this relation theoretically is a complicated task. In the following, I will collate different theoretical parameters by examining how scholars have approached the relation between a vernacular (main) text and authoritative texts, no matter if they come in the shape of a marginal gloss or form the basis of an exegetical reading. I will focus on those studies whose parameters have proven to be useful for my own work and I will arrive at an eclectic theoretical frame. In the process, it will be necessary to dissect the different layers in which these relations of Middle English and Latin can be expressed. One keyterm that lies at the basis of all these layers and permeates their boundaries is ‘authority’. This authority, it has long been assumed, is exerted from the Latin sources and transmitted from them to the vernacular texts. Recent studies, however, have begun to see the relation as somewhat more complex and have started to regard the influence of, say, marginal glosses as potentially subversive rather than supportive. The first dimension this relation between Middle English main text and Latin authority can take is a spatial and hence a visual one. The spatial dimension plays a role mostly for the discussion of marginal glosses that accompany a central, main text. Glosses can stand in a number of spatial relations to the main text and need not always be marginal. M. B. Parkes discusses the layout of academic texts and how this layout changed in the course of the 12th and 13th centuries.¹⁹ Up to the 12th century, glosses were mostly interlinear, translating or explaining single words or expressions, with not enough space to be verbose. Michael Camille explains the consequences in terms of spatial freedom that the practice of marginal glossing brought along: “The marginal gloss, by contrast, interacts with and reinterprets a text that has come to be seen as fixed and finalized.”²⁰ Parkes argues along the same lines when he says that glosses in the margin had already been the means of identifying sources before the 12th century, but the uses to which these glosses were put, as well as the

 M. B. Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book,” in Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts, ed. by M. B. Parkes (London and Rio Grande: The Hambledon Press, 1991), pp. 35 – 70.  Michael Camille, Image on the Edge: the Margins of Medieval Art (London: Reaktion Books, 1992), pp. 20 – 21.

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extent to which they were employed, changed considerably.²¹ This means that the margin of medieval manuscripts offers glosses more space to elaborate and to relate to the main text than the space in between lines offered to interlinear glosses. This does not mean, however, that marginal glosses are unaffected by spatial constraints: The higher the number of marginal glosses on a page, the smaller the space for each gloss gets, which will be of relevance in one of the case studies later. Space is thus a determining factor in the studies of glossed manuscripts. The spatial relation between glosses and main text creates a visual experience that has an effect on the reader. Ardis Butterfield examines the ordinatio of all textual elements in the manuscripts of Troilus and Criseyde. Her focus lies on the layout and the different ways of marking the songs and letters in the text. This approach is founded in her belief that medievalists often pay “inadequate attention to the whole visual structure of the manuscript page: if we look too narrowly at certain textual elements without appreciating that they form part of the larger critical perception implied by the interconnected decisions of layout in a manuscript, we will miss their significance or worry over categories of our own making.”²² She comes to the conclusion that in the Troilus manuscripts, glosses and rubrics function as “visual markers, including red [ink, E.K.] used for either the lettering of song headings or for underlining.”²³ This way of structuring a literary text by means of rubrics, glosses, the use of different colours etc. has a long tradition as it goes back to the layout of scholastic texts.²⁴ As each of the Troilus manuscript differs slightly from the next, they all offer different ways of perceiving the text and its interrelation with glosses as well as other structuring elements, of which colours are only one. Different scripts and sizes of script can serve the same purpose: glosses written in a much smaller script certainly appear to be less important than the main text they accompany. But the same holds true for the opposite case: Christopher Baswell discusses marginal glosses that are written in the same script and size as the main text and maintains that “[t]hey seem to be straining toward the reappropriation of visual centrali-

 M. B. Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book,” pp. 35 – 37.  Butterfield, “Mise-en-page in the Troilus Manuscripts: Chaucer and French Manuscript Culture,” p. 60.  Ibid., p. 72.  Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book,” pp. 35 – 37.

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ty.”²⁵ The visual message of an obtrusive marginal text or a marginal text that shares the same formalia as the main text surely levels out the hierarchy of texts on the page to a certain degree. Another visual effect is created not through the formal or structural nature of the glosses, but simply by their presence or absence. As Siân Echard remarks in her study of the glossed manuscripts of Gower’s Confessio: “The physical framing of the poem by Latin in the manuscripts gives the poem the appearance of other authoritative, glossed manuscripts. Thus the Confessio Amantis appears to be about control – of interpretation, of texts, of tongues.”²⁶ This effect, the glosses signalling commentary and thus explanation or at least help in the interpretation process, can also be seen in the glossed manuscripts of the Regement. Glosses are, in most cases, situated in the margins and highlighted there, either with blue and red paraph marks, or with a larger and more pronounced script. One last spatial issue is raised by the observation that glosses seem to be a much more flexible bit of text: they can be moved around, not only in the margin, but also into the space of the main text. The main text, in comparison, is quite static. Siân Echard finds an example for such a spatial migration of gloss text in the manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis. ²⁷ Glosses are also more flexible in a metaphorical way: they are less stable entities in a work’s manuscript stemma, as scribes were more prone to leave out the glosses than they were to omit the main text. Over the course of a text’s manuscript tradition, glosses become more and more prone to be omitted from a newly copied witness. This also applies to the manuscript corpus of the Regement: most witnesses that contain no or only a few glosses were copied in the late 15th century. The next dimension that is significant when it comes to the relation between Middle English main and Latin authoritative text is the linguistic one. Scholars have long believed that in late medieval glossed texts, the function of the Latin glossing apparatus was to lend authority to the vernacular main text. When it comes to Latin, the language of learning, several scholars have referred to the language’s effect on texts as an ‘aura’. Charles R. Blyth, for example, says about the Regement that the Latin glosses lend the Middle English text an “aura of authority”.²⁸ Similarly, Michael Camille maintains that “Latin had an aura as

 Christopher Baswell, “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature,” in The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen, ed. by Penelope B. Doob, Charlotte C. Morse, and Marjorie C. Woods (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), p. 147.  Echard, “With Carmen’s Help: Latin Authorities in the Confessio Amantis,” p. 5.  Ead., pp. 20 – 25.  Blyth, “Introduction,” p. 12.

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it was separated from the baser speech acts of everyday existence in the complex rituals of a clerical group, whose monopoly was the manipulation of this metalanguage.”²⁹ And with regard to the Confessio Amantis, Robert F. Yeager argues that Gower complemented his Middle English main text with Latin glosses “to give credentials, to provide the learned polish that, judging from the style of both the Mirour de l’Omme and the Vox Clamantis, Gower so clearly admired.”³⁰ In the case of Hoccleve’s Regement, Gower’s Confessio and other vernacular texts with Latin glosses, two traditions attributed with lending authority merge: the Latin language and the practice of glossing. The second tradition, the glossing of texts and quotation of sources, goes back to academic texts which came with elaborate techniques of ordinatio and compilatio, as studied by M. B. Parkes. The practices of marking sections, identifying sources and commenting on and explaining concepts were transmitted from academic to literary texts. As Graham D. Caie shows in his study, “it is […] not surprising to find that a number of vernacular text in the later Middle Ages were also glossed, and that they would have been used by the reader in the same way as the scholastic glossed texts, namely as a commentary, as well as for source and cross references.”³¹ Parkes identifies several vernacular non-academic works that were influenced by these principles: among John Langland’s and John Gower’s works, the Canterbury Tales poses an impressive example with its clear division into sections, most elaborately marked in the Ellesmere manuscript with glosses, rubrics, initials, as well as pilgrim portraits.³² And Roger Ellis, in his introductory chapter to the edition of My Compleinte and Other Poems, sees in the glosses “Hoccleve’s desire to provide his works with the paraphernalia of medieval scholarly editorial practice, so as to claim for himself, as Chaucer and Gower had done before him, the status of vernacular author.”³³ But even though Latin was regarded as the language of authority, this does not mean that readers – medieval and modern – were not aware of Latin’s potentially subversive effect, and that they did

 Michael Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” Art History 8 (1985): p. 30.  Robert F. Yeager, “English, Latin, and the Text as ‘Other’: The Page as Sign in the Work of John Gower,” Text 3 (1978): p. 256.  Graham D. Caie, “The Significance of Marginal Glosses in the Earliest Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales,” in Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition, ed. by David Lyle Jeffrey (Ottawa: Ottawa University Press, 1984), p. 77.  Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the Development of the Book,” pp. 61 and 65. Douglas McMillan goes as far as making the love for quoting authorities in order to support one’s argument part of the medieval frame of mind: McMillan, “The Single Most Popular of Thomas Hoccleve’s Poems: The Regement of Princes,” p. 64.  Ellis, “Introduction,” p. 22.

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not scrutinize the relation. Hanning gives insight into this process of critical review: “The idea that a gloss manipulates rather than explains its text may seem a peculiar modern one, but medieval scholars and satirists were by no means unaware of the possibilities of such textual harassment.”³⁴ Alain de Lille, the 12thcentury theologian and philosopher, in his speech against heretics, “Contra Hereticos”, asserts that “[b]ecause authority has a waxen nose, which is to say that it can be bent into different meanings, it must be supported by rational arguments.”³⁵ This shows that processes of exegesis, the practice of interpreting authorities, have always been conceived of as open and flexible ones – and that authority has been seen as a performative rather than an ontic concept. Another example are the 13th-century Parisian exegetes Peter Comestor and Stephen Langton who openly expressed the view that literal explanations of the Bible offered less freedom to the exegete than allegorical glossings.³⁶ In short: the ambiguous, potentially subversive power of a gloss over a main text has always been a part of the term and its use. According to Beryl Smalley, the 13th century saw a change in how the word ‘glossa’ was perceived: rather than denoting a commentary or an explanation, it now started implying a “glossing over”.³⁷ The textual relation between a vernacular main text and a Latin authoritative text is the third dimension that can be conceptualized. It is the most complex of the three dimensions. The textual relation, or relation in content, between Latin and Middle English texts offers interesting theoretical parameters for this study. With the first of the MED’s definitions mentioned at the outset of this chapter, glosses could be understood as commentaries that yield insight into the main text. A second glance, however, shows that matters are not as simple. Robert S. Sturges stud-

 Hanning, “‘I Shall Fine it in a Maner Glose’: Versions of Textual Harrassment in Medieval Literature,” p. 29.  My translation; “Sed quia auctoritas cereum habet nasum, id est in diversum potest flecti sensum, rationibus roborandum est.” J. P. Migne, Patrologiæ cursus completus: sive bibliotheca universalis, integra, uniformis, commoda, oeconomica, omnium SS. patrum, doctorum, scriptorumque ecclesiasticorum. Series latina, Also known as: Patrologia latina (Parisiis: Apud Garnieri Fratres, 1844), Vol. 210, Col. 333 A. Interestingly, scholars who refer to Alain’s waxen nose tend to disregard the quote’s last clause. Alastair Minnis and A. B. Scott, for example, translate the sentence as “an authority has a wax nose, which means that it can be bent into taking on different meanings”: Alastair J. Minnis and A. B. Scott, eds., Medieval Literary Theory and Criticism: c. 1100-c. 1375, The Commentary-Tradition, Rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003), p. 323.  Hanning, “‘I Shall Fine it in a Maner Glose’: Versions of Textual Harrassment in Medieval Literature,” pp. 29 – 30.  Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame University Press, 1978), p. 271.

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ies how the relation of glosses and main text was understood throughout history. He discusses St. Bonaventure’s classification of different roles in the production of theological commentary texts. Sturges remarks that “[e]ven if, as Bonaventure suggests, the commentator’s main goal is simply to clarify the previous text, the addition of a commenting voice in itself alters the reader’s experience, at least by directing it more explicitly toward a particular interpretation.”³⁸ So while Bonaventure supposed that commentaries might work as straightforward explanations, Sturges, applying Bakhtin’s concept of polyglossia to medieval literary texts, highlights that commentaries add a second and potentially disruptive voice to that of the main text. Sturges sees most subversive potential in the fact that “in practice there is no guarantee that the commentator’s interpretation is precisely coextensive with the author’s.”³⁹ I believe that it is neither necessary nor helpful to differentiate between a commentator and an author or to distinguish their aims in the process of writing and commenting. Rather, the disruptive effect of commentaries should be regarded as an innate potential instead of being the result of a commentator’s lack of abilities or insight into the author’s intention. This disruptive effect a gloss may have on a main text has recently been studied by several scholars. Some of them describe the effect in quite dramatic terms, as a “manipulation” and “harrassment”. Kantik Ghosh examines Wycclifite texts and comes to the conclusion that precisely because authority is flexible (like a waxen nose), it can be used to serve a number of particular purposes: “Textual auctoritas is above all a question of manipulation: biblical and other ‘authoritative’ passages provide an occasion for an interested, reinventive hermeneutics which can be rhetorical (when affective or persuasive) or dialectical (when argumentative, confrontational or ludic), or both.”⁴⁰ Robert W. Hanning, who understands the gloss as a commentary in the widest sense, argues that when glosses (i. e. commentaries) and main text meet, the glosses perform what he describes as coming close to an act of violence, “harassing” the main text and, implicitly, also harassing the reader into seeing certain aspects of the text rather than others.⁴¹ As Christopher Baswell discusses the relation of margin and centre in medieval manuscripts, he takes a slightly less negative

 Sturges, “Medieval Authorship and the Polyphonic Text: From Manuscript Commentary to the Modern Novel,” p. 125.  Ibid.  Kantik Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 5.  Hanning, “‘I Shall Fine it in a Maner Glose’: Versions of Textual Harrassment in Medieval Literature,” p. 27.

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stance. He ascribes to the manuscript margin, and thus indirectly to the marginal glosses, the “capacity both to challenge and to reform the center it surrounds.”⁴² While Baswell already hints at the potentially multifaceted nature of gloss-text relations, another study makes this even clearer: Evelyn B. Tribble examines the margins of early modern printed texts. In her study, the relation of marginal gloss and central text is understood as a changeable one rather than one of one-sided intervention. She argues that the margins and the text proper were in shifting relationships of authority; the margin might affirm, summarize, underwrite the main text block and thus tend to stabilize meaning, but it might equally assume a contestatory or parodic relation to the text by which it stood. […] Yet precisely because the margin was in a fluid relationship to the text proper, margins allow us to see the competing claims of internal authority and plural, external authorities in the margins of the text.⁴³

Tribble’s study shows that there is no such thing as the relation of marginal and central text, of authoritative source and its exegetical reading. These relations vary and can take all kinds of forms. What is missing in all the studies mentioned so far is the assumption that this influence can go both ways. Glosses can change our perception of the main text, of course, but the main text can influence our reading of the glosses just as much. Next to being dynamic and varying, the relation of main text and authoritative text can thus be reciprocal. Next to the more recent studies mentioned so far, a slightly older study will serve as backdrop against which theoretical foundations of this chapter can be defined. Mary Carruthers studies the D-Fragment of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and distinguishes different types of glossing in the prologue and tale told by the Wife of Bath, but especially in the Friar’s and the Summoner’s tales. Her study is based on the distinction between the words (or letters) and what they signify. Glossing, according to Carruthers, can help bring the meaning of text to light: “The function of glossing is to elucidate an obscure text. Exegesis conceives of itself as discovering the spiritual or true meaning which lies beneath the literal surface of the word. […] Glossing, good or bad, implies a distinction between words and the things they signify, between literal expression and meaningful content, the outer chaff and the inner kernel which the chaff conceals and yet from which it should take its form.”⁴⁴ This understanding of

 Baswell, “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature,” p. 121.  Evelyn B. Tribble, Margins and Marginality: The Printed Page in Early Modern England (Charlottesville, VA, and London: University Press of Virginia, 1993), p. 6.  Mary Carruthers, “Letter and Gloss in the Friar’s and Summoner’s Tales,” Journal of Narrative Theory 2 (1972): p. 209.

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glosses presupposes that there is such a thing as one kernel, and that both texts (gloss and main text) are willing to work together for the sake of revealing this kernel. This chapter is based on the assumption that glossing may serve to unearth this kernel, just like it may serve the purpose to offer a second or third possible kernel, to hide the fact that there is no kernel, or to make finding the kernel impossible. Yet another study that forms an important basis for this examination is Larry Scanlon’s Narrative, Authority, and Power, an examination of one of the most popular textual devices in didactic literature: the exemplum. Serving the purpose of illustrating correct or wrong behaviour through a short narrative, which in most cases is quoted from old and respectable texts, the exemplum is closely connected to the question of authority. Scanlon criticises scholars’ short-sighted assumption that authority and narrativity form a duality: Authority, on the one hand, is assumed to be stable and simple; narrativity, on the other hand, is conceived of as complex and dynamic. The exemplum as one of the most common narrative forms of the Middle Ages, Scanlon argues, is a site where authority and narrativity meet and enter into a relationship of tension. Rather than a static and closed entity, so Scanlon, the exemplum as a narrative form “did not merely ‘confirm’ moral authority, but reproduced it, and that process of ideological reproduction opens up complex questions of power that have been largely ignored.”⁴⁵ This interdependence of exemplarity and not just moral, but especially political power needs to be taken into consideration in a study on a didactic text that is explicitly directed at a political leader. But Scanlon’s study is not only important because he adds power to the equation. He also examines the power of exempla as the result of a process that is performative rather than as a standard characteristic of this literary form: “authority is not some pure given, but an ideological structure that must be produced and maintained.”⁴⁶ This emphasises the performative aspect of authority, and here Scanlon becomes most relevant for my own study: rather than being inherent in a source text, a particular author or a quote, authority is ascribed to them by the reader in a process which is, as I believe, often triggered when a combination of, say, gloss and main text is not straightforwardly clear. Reading and interpreting texts like the Regement thus always requires a reader who actively thinks about the significance or the lack of significance of such ‘authorities’. Kantik Ghosh also sees textual authority as something that is not static but processual.

 Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition, p. 5.  Ibid., p. 26.

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He states that “[t]extual ‘authority’ exists in a dialogue with the interpreter: a source-‘authority’, seen as the repository of value, is ceaselessly reinvented through a process of hermeneutic supplementation.”⁴⁷ The interrelation of glosses and main text as well as of authoritative texts and the texts they are used to support, is thus determined by several aspects on spatial, linguistic, and content-related levels. These levels are never completely separable and often intersect. Out of all the examinations discussed so far, several theoretical premises for this study can be deduced. Glosses on the manuscript page are spatially flexible and their spatial relation to the main text creates certain visual effects. Linguistically, Latin glosses as well as Latin sources that are being interpreted exude what scholars often call an “aura”. This aura is deceiving, however, and can be employed to different purposes, some of which are not at all to support a straightforward interpretation of the main text. And finally, the textual and content-related interplay of gloss or commentary and main text can be just as complex and subversive as the other two levels. Rather than clarifying the meaning of a main text, a gloss may serve a plethora of purposes. In short, the relation of marginal and central text, of commentary and main text must be regarded as a flexible, varying and multifaceted one on several levels. As to the matter of authority, which is supposed to be inherent in the Latin sources and the practice of glossing, it is part of the Regement’s performative character: Rather than being a given characteristic in certain texts and absent from others, authority is constantly created in a process that not only includes a Middle English text like the Regement as well Latin sources, but also a reader to observe and evaluate the different relations these two texts can enter. In addition to this general performative character of authority, a text like the Regement may perform authority in a different, much more substantial and concrete manner: the exegetical process displayed in the passage that is the focus of the second case study can be seen as a performance of an academic debate in which sources are used in particularly pragmatic way. Both in the relation of marginal glosses and main text as well as in the interpretation of quotes and authoritative sources, the Regement performs strategies of academic practices – of glossing texts and of debate and exegesis. The manuscript situation will play a special role in my discussion. As the two case studies will show, the practice of glossing, both in the manuscript margins and as a process of interpretation, is closely linked to manuscript culture. In

 Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts, p. 6.

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their openness and moveability, glosses are especially prone to instability, expansion, omission, and spatial variance.

3.1 Case Study I: Marginal Glosses and their Relation to the Main Text Marginal Latin glosses in vernacular medieval texts are a multifaceted issue and deserve much more scholarly attention than they have received so far. Nicholas Perkins, for example, dedicates a sub-chapter of his monograph to the exempla Hoccleve translated from Jacob de Cessolis’ Game of Chess (the Ludo Scaccorum). He shows how, in translation, the Middle English exempla became more graspable through added dialogues and direct speech. In this process of translation, the exempla’s contents were often changed considerably, which might make them less clear in their message or even make them fit poorly with the overall topic of the chapter they are included in.⁴⁸ What Perkins does not discuss, however, is how the Latin glosses corresponding to these exempla, which often give a short summary of the stories, were dealt with, and how the relation between Middle English exemplum and Latin heading gloss changed. The following case study constitutes a very detailed examination of one of the Regement’s chapters (“De consilio habendo in omnibus factis”, “On how to accept counsel in all situations”). In the first part, and following the structure of this chapter, I will examine in which ways the relation between glosses and main text are shaped into creating ambiguity. I will show how the glosses are spatially more flexible than the main text, which leads to textually inconclusive readings of the main text in combination with the glosses. Further ambiguity results from stylistic differences played out between central and marginal text. In a second step, the manuscript situation, which yields an even more diverse picture, will be taken into account. A general but short overview of the glossing apparatus in Hoccleve’s text marks the beginning of this case study.

3.1.1 Marginal Glosses in the Regement of Princes The glosses in the Regement have so far received only little scholarly attention. Marcia Smith Marzec’s 1987 study “The Latin Marginalia of the Regiment of Princes as an Aid to Stemmatic Analysis” remains their only detailed examination so

 Perkins, Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint, pp. 103 – 114.

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far.⁴⁹ The Regement contains roughly two hundred marginal glosses.⁵⁰ This corpus of glosses itself is relatively stable, but their number is not. In other words: while in some manuscripts glosses are left out and thus reduced in number, the glosses themselves and their contents do hardly change over time. These few changes in content are caused by glosses that are added by later scribes or readers, but these are not only quite small in number, but are restricted to single or few manuscripts. Most manuscripts contain parts of the complete glossing programme; only four manuscripts are completely unglossed, and only few witnesses feature what seems to be the full corpus of glosses. Marcia Smith Marzec describes a few scenarios that can induce scribes to omit glosses from the manuscripts they are copying: constraints of space, time, the lack of money to pay for a rubricator’s working hours, or the lack of interest in the glossing apparatus. Furthermore, it is not simply a decision to leave out all glosses on the one hand or to include them all on the other. Glosses may be abbreviated, or included in the beginning of a text, but then left out consequently, or the other way round. In short: an infinite number of factors determines whether glosses are included in or excluded from a manuscript. One matter that Marzec discusses in her study is the authorship of the marginal glosses, or, in other words, the question whether the glosses are authorial or not. She argues, albeit with caution, that it is most likely, however, that Hoccleve glossed the work himself, either in full glosses or in brief citation for scribal direction. Hoccleve worked closely with his sources, using them in “block” fashion, often translating almost verbatim, and the identified glosses are true to his Latin texts, i. e., not a paraphrase composed by Hoccleve. Probably Hoccleve glossed the English passages straight out of the Latin source as he prepared his text. With more familiar sources, however, particularly biblical sources, there is a greater chance of a gloss’s originating with the scribe or rubricator, for he might recognize the English passage and record the Latin from memory.⁵¹

Later scholars follow Marzec’s opinion and take it for more or less granted that the glosses are Hoccleve’s. Another proposition Marzec makes is that the “very obvious contradictions between the English and Latin which can be found in  Marzec’s stemmatic analysis of the Regement’s manuscript corpus examines in how far the marginal glosses add anything to our knowledge of the transmission of Hoccleve’s text: Marzec, “The Latin Marginalia of the Regiment of Princes as an Aid to Stemmatic Analysis.”  Charles Blyth’s edition lists 202, but this number is not the final and decisive count, because Blyth bases his edition on two manuscripts only and thus does not offer a picture that is representative to the whole stemma.  Marzec, “The Latin Marginalia of the Regiment of Princes as an Aid to Stemmatic Analysis,” p. 280.

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some manuscripts”⁵² result from the division of labour that prevailed at the production of a number of manuscripts. She ascribes this division of labour to the higher demand of copies and the consequent production of several copies in one workshop or scriptorium. And she comes to the conclusion that rubricators who filled in the glosses after the main text had already been copied did not pay too much attention to the connection between the two texts. It would be beside the point to argue against this and claim that a number of manuscripts prove that artisans working on a manuscript subsequent to the scribe who copied the main text did read the text and reacted to it. The crucial point is that it does not really matter who is to ‘blame’ when glosses and main text do not fit perfectly, because the result is there for the readers’ and our eyes to see and interpret. At the basis of Marzec’s assumptions lies the firm belief in an authorial original that is perfect, as well as in scribal performance that changes texts for the worse, and this is not the belief inherent in this study. As stated above, there are hardly any studies concerned with the Regement’s glosses. To make up for this scarcity, it may be worthwhile to have a closer look at studies of the glossing apparatus of the medieval text that lends itself most readily to a comparison, that is, John Gower’s Confessio Amantis. Written in Middle English, only some twenty years before the Regement, with a similar kind of frame narrative and containing a very didactic Book VII, the most important point of comparison here are the Latin glosses that adorn the Confessio’s vernacular main text. Derek Pearsall describes how the very elaborate and complex glossing apparatus in the Confessio Amantis is executed in and affected by the manuscript tradition. He credits the scribes with a great amount of “care that was taken to follow Gower’s plan for the presentation of the whole work.”⁵³ Indeed, Gower’s glossing apparatus is exceptional not only because it survives in such a stable condition throughout the manuscript tradition, but also because it is so complex to begin with: it consists of four sets of Latin glosses, all of which relate to the

 Ead., p. 272. Interestingly, the example she mentions is a mistake “introduced into l. 4500 by the scribe of MS. I who attributes a paraphrase to Isaiah, glossed correctly as Jeremiah 6”, which seems to suggest that the rubricator first glossed the page and the scribe filled in the main text later. This scenario seems rather unlikely. In fact, I believe her example suggests exactly the opposite: a scribe made a mistake first and a later rubricator corrected it. A situation like this would contradict Marzec’s assumption that rubricators did not read the texts they were glossing.  Derek Pearsall, “Gower’s Latin in the Confessio Amantis,” in Latin and Vernacular: Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts, ed. by A. J. Minnis (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1989), p. 14.

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English main text differently, be it with regard to space or to content. Only in few exceptional manuscripts are some of the sets of glosses left out, or abandoned halfway through the copying process.⁵⁴ Pearsall argues that the high level of complexity of this glossing apparatus, as well as its stability in the manuscript tradition suggests that the glosses are authorial. The overall impact of the Latin glosses on the Middle English main text in the Confessio Amantis, according to Pearsall, is that “the Latin commentaries are not means to the understanding of the English poem but instructions on how to read it according to the conventions of a specific code of reading”.⁵⁵ This at least hints at the assumption that the relation of main text and glosses does not simply take the form of uni-directional explanations. An even more complex relation is postulated by Winthrop Wetherbee: In his study of the Latin verse glosses in the Confessio Amantis, he finds out that while the Confessio at first glance seems to be an “ostensibly straightforward didactic project”, the Latin head-verses in the text exhibit a large number of ambiguities on closer inspection.⁵⁶ In a closer study of chosen passages, he shows that Latin text and Middle English exempla do not only emphasises different aspects, but also form ambiguities in meaning that open up the reader’s interpretation to different – at times contrasting – possibilities. Wetherbee claims that “[t]he effect of Gower’s elaborate framing of the text of the Confessio is to make explicit and central the confrontation between traditional Latin auctoritas and a vernacular with its own claims to meaning.”⁵⁷ Robert F. Yeager argues along similar lines: for him, the sets of Latin marginal glosses are voices which offer a “layered interpretation”, a “‘conversational,’ or even choric, interpretation”.⁵⁸ Siân Echard takes yet another perspective on the Confessio’s Latin glosses: “Gower’s glosses do not behave as glosses usually do, and this failure of the glosses to conform to the expectations they raise is part, I will argue, of an attempt […] to destabilize the physical and linguistic features of paradigmatic authoritative texts.”⁵⁹ So Echard doubts that the Latin text in the Confessio Aman-

 For a more concise overview of the glossing apparatus in the whole manuscript tradition, see Echard, “With Carmen’s Help: Latin Authorities in the Confessio Amantis,” pp. 16 – 18.  Pearsall, “Gower’s Latin in the Confessio Amantis,” p. 24.  Winthrop Wetherbee, “Latin Structure and Vernacular Space: Gower, Chaucer and the Boethian Tradition,” in Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutuality, Exchange, ed. by Robert F. Yeager (Victoria: English Literary Studies, Department of English, University of Victoria, BC, 1991), p. 7.  Ibid., p. 10.  Yeager, “English, Latin, and the Text as ‘Other’: The Page as Sign in the Work of John Gower,” p. 264.  Echard, “With Carmen’s Help: Latin Authorities in the Confessio Amantis,” p. 14.

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tis indeed fulfils the function that is commonly ascribed to it: lending authority to the Middle English text, stabilising it, and / or guiding the readers’ interpretation of the Middle English. Instead, she proposes that Latin and English texts act as two different voices on the manuscript page, voices that are in dialogue, sometimes in disagreement, with each other. This is also mirrored in the spatial relation of Latin and Middle English in the manuscripts of the Confessio: most of them have moved the Latin apparatus into the column of the Middle English text. The Latin voice, according to Echard, “is no more capable of providing access to stable meaning than is any other.”⁶⁰ On a more general level, she argues that at the bottom of this lies not only the incapability of the Latin text to provide access to meaning. Rather, she comes to the conclusion that Gower’s text stages the malleability of language in general: “[f]ar from being the secure source of auctoritas, language – all language – is shown to be radically unreliable.”⁶¹ All of these studies show that the ambiguous and diverse ways of performing authority are not exclusive to the Regement but can be observed in other texts as well. Graham D. Caie in his study of the marginal glosses in manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales shows that this text, too, holds potential for further study.⁶² The impression arises that literary texts that come with marginal glosses always exhibit a certain degree of ambiguity and subversion. Echard’s study is an important model for my own: like her, I will regard the spatial and linguistic relation of main text and gloss as significant for the interrelation of content. And in a similar way, I will also claim that the text’s creation of tension between these elements can be generalised and bears meaning on a broader level. But whereas the Confessio Amantis, according to Echard, stages the unreliability of language, I argue that the Regement of Princes takes this unreliability a step further and shows how not only language, but also the employment of language, the interpretation of texts, is unreliable, because it depends on those who interpret.

3.1.2 Reading Blyth’s and Furnivall’s Regements The chapter on the acceptance of counsel in all situations (“De consilio habendo in omnibus factis”), the most metaliterary and self-referential of all the Regement’s chapters, starts out emphasising the importance of counsel for the prince.  Ead., p. 39.  Ead., p. 9.  Caie, “The Significance of Marginal Glosses in the Earliest Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales.”

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Now purpose I to trete how to a kyng It needful is to do by conseil ay, Withouten which good is he do nothyng; For a kyng is but a man soul, par fay, And be his wit nevere so good, he may Erre and mistake him othirwhyle among, Whereas good conseil may exclude a wrong.⁶³

Counsellors – and of course this includes compilers of counsel literature as counsellors in a wider sense – are described as important, if not absolutely vital for the reign of a king. The next two stanzas encourage the prince never to favour his own will over outside counsel. The acceptance of counsel, these first three stanzas imply, is the one most crucial characteristic of a good ruler. After three stanzas, the text moves from acting upon counsel to the next important question: who is a suitable counsellor? The prince is told to take advice from a wide range of people: And if that a man of symple degree, Or poore of birthe, or yong, thee wel conseille, Admitte his reson and take it in gree. Why nat, my goode Lord? What sholde yow eile?⁶⁴

Next to simple-minded people, poor and young counsellors may be just as suitable, the text states. Especially the last feature comes as a surprise, because didactic literature usually features old men as counsellors. As this somewhat unexpected advice is not only given, but also supported with the line “Why nat, my good Lord? What sholde yow eile?”, its unorthodox nature is brought to the readers’ attention even more. Why this promotion of anything but an old counsellor? Of course, these four lines are, to a certain degree, a fitting description of the narrator Thomas Hoccleve himself: He is a man who describes himself as unlearned (“My wit is also slipir as an eel”),⁶⁵ who is moving in the lower ranks of society, and who is poor under current circumstances. He certainly cannot be called ‘yong’ any more, but he also is not extremely old, either.⁶⁶ These few lines put the narrator in the position of a potential counsellor and add authority to his

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4859 – 4865.  Ibid., ll. 4880 – 4884.  Ibid., l. 1985.  Hoccleve is assumed to have been in his early to mid-forties when he wrote the Regement. On the question of Hoccleve’s age, see Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England, pp. 148 – 149, as well as my discussion in Chapter 2.

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text, which, after all, is nothing but his counsel in written form. The potential value of a poor counsellor is given special prominence, as the passage then runs on: But men do nat so, whereof I merveille; The world favourith ay the ryches sawe Thogh that his conseil be nat worth an hawe. What he seith, up is to the clowdes bore; But, and the poore speke worth the tweye, His seed nat sprynge may – it nis but lore. They seyn, “What is he this? Lat him go pleye!” O, worthy Prince, beeth wel waar, I preye, That your hy dignitee and sad prudence No desdeyn have of the poores sentence.⁶⁷

We may be tempted to consider this as yet another reference to the financially worried circumstances Hoccleve is living in. But this may be just a little bit too simple, and there is more to come in the chapter on counsel that complicates the picture further: The chapter continues by instructing the prince how to test his counsellors: when pretending to be in financial strains, good counsellors will either offer their own money, or they will suggest that the prince take some of his jewels to the pawn shop and exchange them for money. Bad counsellors will want him to suppress his people and squeeze the last bit of valuables out of them. Up until this point, ten stanzas into the chapter, there have been only two Latin marginal glosses accompanying the main text. These marginal glosses are translated into the main text quite faithfully and are in no way ambiguous – hence, they are of no interest here. Line 4929 starts off the eleventh stanza, and what follows then is, literally, quite a sight:⁶⁸ the next three stanzas (numbers 11, 12, and 13 of the chapter), are accompanied by eight marginal glosses. I will quote these three stanzas in full, followed by the eight glosses that Blyth’s edition ascribes to the lines I mark with asterisks:⁶⁹

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4884– 4893.  A digitised image of fol. 87r of Harley 4866 can be found on the website of the British Library: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_4866_fs001r [last accessed August 24, 2016].  The situation as described here is that of Blyth’s edition, where the marginal glosses are not printed next to the text, but in an apparatus of endnotes, with small nota-bene hands in the margins of the main text denoting the glosses’ spatial relation to it (Blyth’s equivalent to my asterisks).

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Conseil may wel be likned to a brydil * Which that an hors up keepith fro fallyng, If man do by conseil; but al in ydil Is reed if man nat folwe it in wirkynge. Do nothyng reedlees; do by conseillynge * Of heedes wyse, and no repentance Ther folwe yow shal in your governance. Commendable is conseil take of the wyse * And nat of fooles, for they may nat love But swich thyng as hem lykith. In al wyse, * Your conseillour cheese, our lord God above; Cheesith eek good men, and away shove The wikkid whos conseil is deceyvable; Thus biddith Holy Writ, it is no fable. Cheesith men eek of old experience – * Hir wit and intellect is glorious; Of hir conseil holsum is the sentence. * The olde mannes reed is fructuous; Waar of yong conseil, it is perillous. * Roboas fond it so whan he forsook * Old conseil and unto yong reed him took.⁷⁰ G1: Scriptum est quod consilium bene potest freno comparari (“It is written that counsel may well be compared to a [horse’s] bridle”). G2: Sine consilio nichil facias et post factum non penitebis (“Do nothing without counsel and you will not be sorry afterwards”). G3: Thobie 4: Consilium semper a sapiente perquire et non a fatuo (Tobias 4[:19]: “Seek counsel always of a wise man and not of a fool”). G4: Scriptum est, Cum fatuis non habeas consilium, quia non possunt diligere nisi quod eis placet, et cetera (It is written, “Do not take counsel with fools because they are not able to choose except what pleases them, etc.”). G5: Iterum Thobie 4: Omnia consilia tua in deo permaneant, et cetera (Again Tobias 4[:20]: “[Desire that] all your counsels may abide in God, etc.”). G6: Scriptum est, Cum bonis fac tuum consilium, non cum impiis, et cetera (It is written, “Take your counsel with the good and not with the impious, etc.”). G7: Proverbiarum 12: Consilia impiorum fraudulenta (Proverbs, 12[:5]: “The counsels of the impious are fraudulent”).

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4929 – 4949. The glosses are taken from p. 246 – 7 of the edition. The English translations corresponding to the Latin glosses are Blyth’s. The numbering of G1-G8 is my own.

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G8: 3 Regum 12: Ad Roboam dixerunt juvenes [qui nutriti erant: correctly in Harley; A omits] cum eo: Sic loqueris ad eos: Minimus digitus meus est grossior dorso patris mei; et nunc pater meus posuit super vos iugum grave; ego autem addam super iugum vestrum; pater meus cecidit vos flagellis; ego autem cedam eos scorpionibus, et cetera (3 Kings 12[:10 – 11]: “The youths who were with him said to Roboam: ‘Thus you will say to them: My smallest finger is larger than my father’s back, and already my father placed upon you a heavy yoke. I moreover will add to your yoke. My father felled you with scourges; I moreover will fell you with scorpions,’ etc.”).

The layout of the folio containing these stanzas, the ratio of glosses and main text, certainly make this passage stand out from the preceding folios. The glosses are not only numerous, but some of them are also quite long, which adds to the effect of a glossing apparatus that gains in content, and – at least visually – also in importance. But is this importance implemented on a content-level? It is worthwhile having a closer look at the development of the content in the main text and at how the glosses relate to this progress. The three stanzas develop steadily, with each of them changing slightly to another aspect of the wider topic of how to obtain counsel. The first stanza emphasises the importance of counsel, comparing it to a bridle with which to lead a horse. In this stanza, both Latin quotations in the marginal glosses are translated directly into the Middle English main text. The first gloss, G1, “Scriptum est quod consilium bene potest freno comparari”,⁷¹ is translated into the Middle English text almost literally as “Conseil may wel be likned to a brydil / Which that an hors up keepith fro fallyng”.⁷² The translation expands the quote and adds the explanatory second line, but other than that, a link between gloss and main text is instantly visible. The second gloss, G2, “Sine consilio nichil facias et post factum non penitebis”⁷³ is expanded quite a bit in translation: “Do nothyng reedlees; do by conseillynge / Of heedes wyse, and no repentance / Ther folwe yow shal in your governance.”⁷⁴ But still, gloss and main text quite obviously correspond and their connection is clear. The second stanza moves the focus of the main text to the choice of counsellors. The prince is advised to eschew choosing fools, but to rather accept wise and God-fearing men into his entourage. Again, the two accompanying glosses are translated into the main text. This time, the two Latin quotations (G3 and 4) are integrated into one Middle English sentence: “Thobie 4: Consilium semper a sapiente perquire et non a fatuo”⁷⁵ and “Scriptum est,

    

Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid., Ibid.,

p. 246. ll. 4929 – 4930. p. 246. ll. 4933 – 4935. p. 246.

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Cum fatuis non habeas consilium, quia non possunt diligere nisi quod eis placet, et cetera”⁷⁶ render the following Middle English sentence: “Commendable is conseil take of the wyse / And nat of fooles, for they may nat love / But swich thyng as hem lykith.”⁷⁷ The second gloss can be seen to be a continuation of the first: By taking up the last word of the first quote – “fatuo” – and repeating it as the first noun in the second quote, this connection is strengthened. Everything about foolish vs. wise counsellors seems to have been said when the third stanza changes the focus of the text again – albeit only slightly. Even though it is still about choosing suitable counsellors, a new distinction is being made: it is not wise vs. foolish any more, but old vs. young. This comes as a surprise, because only a few stanzas above, at the beginning of the chapter, we remember the text so fervently defending advice from an unusual set of counsellors, namely the young and poor. What increases our surprise is the fact that the first three of the four marginal glosses next to this stanza do not move on to the new topic along with the main text. They trail behind and remain with the last topic, the difference between pious and impious counsellors. What is more, these three glosses (G5 – 7) all repeat the same point, the preference of God-fearing over impious counsellors. A closer look at the manuscript situation offers an explanation for this disruption: caused by spatial restraints in the margin next to the preceding stanza, the three glosses G5 – 7 end up next to the third stanza, but they really belong to the last few lines of the second stanza. Because the margin next to the second stanza is already filled with the glosses G3 and G4, however, G5 – 7 have to be moved further down on the folio. But it is not really important to know why exactly this spatial movement happens, because the effect remains despite our knowledge of what lies at the basis of this combination of main and marginal text. What matters is that the stanza changes the subject from wise vs. foolish counsellors towards young vs. old counsellors and that this stanza is accompanied by several glosses that do not change topic concurrently. Instead, they are slightly removed in content and the combination of main text and gloss here is especially interesting. The first five lines of the third stanza, Cheesith men eek of old experience – Hir wit and intellect is glorious; Of hir conseil holsum is the sentence. The olde mannes reed is fructuous; Waar of yong conseil, it is perillous”,⁷⁸

 Ibid.  Ibid., ll. 4936 – 4938.  Ibid., ll. 4943 – 4947.

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all repeat the same point, namely that old men are better counsellors. In a similar way, the three glosses that accompany these five lines also remain with one and the same point: counsel from pious people is good, whereas impious men give fraudulent advice. In this particular combination, glosses and main text thus suggest a direct equation of old and good on the one hand, and young and impious on the other. The issue of young counsellors is not exhausted in the third stanza of the discussed passage. The second-last line mentions an exemplum, the biblical story of Rehoboam. And here, main text and glossing apparatus are re-united: the main text turns to the exemplum, “Roboas fond it so [i. e. perillous, E.K.] whan he forsook / Old conseil and unto yong reed him took”,⁷⁹ while the gloss treats this story from the first Book of Kings in more detail:⁸⁰ “3 Regum 12: Ad Roboam dixerunt juvenes qui nutriti erant cum eo: Sic loqueris ad eos: Minimus digitus meus est grossior dorso patris mei; et nunc pater meus posuit super vos iugum grave; ego autem addam super iugum vestrum; pater meus cecidit vos flagellis; ego autem cedam eos scorpionibus, et cetera.”⁸¹ Here gloss and main text are treating the same subject-matter again. But to stop there does not do the text justice, I believe, because even though both main text and gloss speak about the same thing (Rehoboam and his young counsellors), they do so employing very different styles. While the Middle English main text focuses on the point this exemplum is supposed to support – the danger inherent in trusting young advisors – and merely mentions Rehoboam as one exemplary person who had to make this experience, the Latin gloss deals with Rehoboam’s story in quite a different way by recounting it more fully. Here, the misjudgement of the king’s young counsellors, and through them of the king himself, is portrayed in more length and in more detail, too. Not only does the gloss re-tell in direct speech what the young people told Rehoboam to do, thus portraying the situation of counselling in a way that is most accessible for the readers because it offers the most immediate insight into the situation.  Ibid., ll. 4948 – 4949.  My own paraphrase of 1 Kings 12: Rehoboam, who succeeds his father Solomon as King of Israel, is faced with a plea from his people. They ask him to lighten the burden that Solomon had placed unto them. When Rehoboam asks his old counsellors what to do, they advice him to meet his objects’ demands, to decrease their taxes and thus secure their loyalty. He then asks his young counsellors who give him the advice quoted in the gloss.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, p. 247, endnote corresponding to ll. 4948 – 4949. Blyth’s translation is “3 Kings 12[:10 – 11]: “The youths who were with him said to Roboam: ‘Thus you will say to them: My smallest finger is larger than my father’s back, and already my father placed upon you a heavy yoke. I moreover will add to your yoke. My father felled you with scourges; I moreover will fell you with scorpions,’ etc.”“

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Furthermore, the three comparisons of Rehoboam and his father, which are meant to scare his people into paying higher taxes, become more and more dramatic and act as proof that the counsellors’ foolishness increases over time: the first of three comparisons sets Rehoboam’s smallest finger into relation to his father’s back without explicitly stating any violence intended. The second, however, speaks of a yoke under which Rehoboam’s father has subjected his people and which will be increased by the son. This comparison is threatening, but at the same time remains rather unspecific as it does not state what exactly this yoke will consist of. It is the third comparison of father and son that makes the horrible violence most explicit: while the father felled his subjects with scourges, his son will outdo him and fell his people with scorpions. And after the third comparison the gloss closes with a menacing “etc.” This is the standard way of ending a quote in a gloss, but in this particular case it hints at the possibility that being felled with scorpions is not the last idea that Rehoboam is given by his foolish young counsellors, but that this cruelty may be surpassed by yet another, even more violent, act. This does not only portray how Latin text and Middle English text diverge and act differently by treating the content of an exemplum to different detail. What is even more interesting than the mere lengths of the two accounts of Rehoboam’s story is that the Latin gloss adopts an almost dramatic style, employing direct speech and dwelling on the violence in a climatic structure that potentially finds no end. The gloss thus not only emphasises the narrative thrust of the exemplary story much more than the main text does, but it also draws out the catching elements of this narrative. It seems to, instead of lending authority, indulge in an entertaining mode much more than the vernacular version does. The roles of Latin and Middle English here appear to be reversed: while the Latin normally represents the scholarly purpose of lending authority in a short and precise gloss, the vernacular Middle English is the place for embellishment, explanation, and accessibility for the reader. In this example, it is the Latin gloss that delivers the colourful narrative while the main text settles for mentioning the key name Rehoboam and repeating the one aspect that is relevant for the chapter: that he was foolish because he listened to young counsellors. In addition to the rupture that divides glosses and main text in this third of the discussed stanzas, these seven lines also undertake a shift compared to the beginning of the whole chapter on accepting counsel: in the first stanzas of this chapter, young counsellors are explicitly named as an uncommon but potentially desirable choice (“Why nat, my goode Lord? What sholde yow eile?”). With the lines just discussed, however, the stance towards young counsellors changes fundamentally, and all of a sudden a young man’s counsel is portrayed as dangerous. And it is not only the main text which warns the prince explicitly to

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“Waar of yong conseil, it is perillous”.⁸² By combining the beginning of this third stanza with the glosses bearing negative connotations from a few lines earlier, a bad note is already added to the idea of young counsellors. It is quite tempting to see the defence of young counsellors at the beginning of the chapter as a reference to Thomas Hoccleve and as a proclamation of what a suitable counsellor this author of the Regement proper is. If this was the case, then this pronounced change of mind would be a warning not only against accepting the counsel of the young, but on a more general level also against taking the Regement serious as a didactic text because its author is so young. But I am not sure that this is all that lies at the basis of this shift of opinion. Rather, I believe that the text creates ambiguity in connection to two related questions. The first is the question “Are young counsellors suitable or not?”, and the second one is “Is Thomas Hoccleve a young counsellor or not?” or rather “How old is Thomas Hoccleve? Are we to picture him as a young or an old man?” The chapter on accepting counsel offers contradictory answers to the first question, and in a similar way, the Regement as a whole makes contradictory statements concerning the second cluster of questions. Judith Ferster notices this issue in the text: the narrator is called “young” by the Old Man, but at the same time, when talking about his occupation as a scribe, he describes himself as experienced.⁸³ As my discussion in Chapter 2 has shown, the Regement presents us with a narrator, who oscillates between young and old age and is never quite graspable age-wise, thus eschewing qualification as a potential counsellor. In Blyth’s edition, which is based on Arundel 38, the relation between main text and marginal glosses is presented in a way that holds much potential for ambiguity. One may think that this is due to Blyth’s editorial choice of moving the marginal glosses to an endnote-section of his edition and ascribing them to particular lines of the main text with the help of pointing hands in the margin of his text. Frederick J. Furnivall’s 1897 edition for the Early English Text Society chooses a different way of displaying main text and glosses, one that is closer to the manuscript layout: here, the glosses are printed directly in the margin of the main text.⁸⁴ This means that Furnivall’s edition renders the passage and the relation of glosses and main text in a way that is closest to Harley 4866, the manuscript it is based on. Other than Blyth’s edition, which suggests a clear connection of a particular gloss to one line of main text, Furnivall’s edition

 Ibid., l. 4947.  Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England, pp. 148 – 149.  Thomas Hoccleve, Hoccleve’s Works: The Regement of Princes, ed. by Frederick J. Furnivall, for the Early English Text Society (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1897), pp. 177– 178.

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renders the relation of both texts more realistically: here, marginal glosses are situated next to whole portions of the main text rather than ascribed to particular lines. A new editorial issue evolves from this: because glosses are printed right next to the text, those glosses that are rather long move the subsequent glosses further down the page. Furnivall’s edition thus makes visually approachable what Blyth cannot represent. Interestingly – or ironically –, however, the result is the same in both editions: glosses and main text seem to be incongruent and the rupture makes readers think about not only the two different systems of text that interact here, but also about how meaning is generated and created in this relation of textual entities. This happens when, spatially, glosses and main text do not work together. But this also happens when, like in the case of Rehoboam, gloss and main text employ different registers and do not fit rhetorically. Both Blyth and Furnivall only offer a representation of one manuscript, and even though their editorial choices are different, the results of their renderings are quite similar. Working with editions yields a very restricted picture of the relation between marginal glosses and main text, and a simplified one at that. Ardis Butterfield, studying glosses and other elements of ordinatio in manuscripts of Troilus and Criseyde, criticises medievalists for their lack of interest in manuscript witnesses: “Although sustained attention to the details of the manuscript page is widespread among those who study French and Latin culture, the Chaucer manuscripts have only recently begun to attract the same kind of attention.”⁸⁵ Indeed, comparing the glossing apparatuses of several manuscripts yields an interestingly variable picture. Here, the glosses are dealt with in a number of ways. In some witnesses, there are no glosses at all connected to this passage. Other manuscripts change the location of their glosses halfway through the passage. In yet other manuscripts, all glosses are situated in the margins completely – three witnesses even include an additional gloss, which is not mentioned in Blyth’s edition. This is not the place to describe all manuscripts and their dealing with the glosses in this passage. A few exemplary cases will suffice.

 Butterfield, “Mise-en-page in the Troilus Manuscripts: Chaucer and French Manuscript Culture,” p. 51.

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3.1.3 Reading the Regement in 15th-Century Witnesses In Bodley 221, all marginal glosses are written in the outer margin with red ink and with red framing lines running along the outer side and the bottom of the gloss. The stanzas of the main text are not divided by spaces in between, but copied one after the other, divided only by a thin line. The first two glosses of the passage, accompanying the first stanza, have been copied separately, each with its own framing lines, and with sufficient space in between the glosses. Starting with the second of the three stanzas, all of the six remaining glosses merge into one large gloss, with one long line framing the left side of the merged gloss, and one at the bottom. No line breaks, let alone spaces in between glosses are included, no paraph marks to signal the beginning of a new gloss. This block of glosses runs over three whole stanzas and two additional lines, so that the allocation of glosses to corresponding lines is almost impossible. Laud Misc. 735 is a similar case. Again, the first two glosses accompanying the first stanza are copied into the margin as separate entries, in red ink and with blue paraph marks that act as framing lines down the left side of each gloss. In stanzas two and three, all glosses conflate into one, with one long blue paraph mark, no spaces between glosses, no line breaks. In both manuscripts, it is impossible to assign glosses to lines in the main text at first or even second glance. Even differentiating between glosses is problematic after the first stanza. So not only is the relation between gloss and main text tension-ridden, but additional difficulties arise already within the glossing apparatus. In these two manuscripts, the glosses accompany the main text in a way that is neither accessible for the reader nor applicable to our reading of the main text. Being structured in a certain way would have made the glosses accessible textually. In addition, structuring the glosses in relation to the main text would have made them connectable to the Middle English text, thus applicable to, and ultimately useful for a reading of the main text. But the glosses in Bodley 221 and Laud Misc. 735 are neither structured in relation to each other, nor do they stand in a clear relation to the main text. In these two manuscripts, it seems that the glosses accompanying these three stanzas do not play an important role textually. Their importance might lie in their visual qualities instead. In other words, it may be exactly the missing structure, the size of the conflated glosses, their lack of accessibility which represents the glosses’ significance here. As bearing visual rather than a textual significance, the glosses act as signals for learnedness, for the kind of authority which is assumed to reside in Latin texts. But at the same time, they signal that access to this learning is not always easy and straightforward, but takes much time and effort.

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In Digby 185, both glosses and main text are structured more clearly and more neatly. All glosses are differentiated with paraph marks in alternating colours. The same holds true for the stanzas, which begin with a slightly larger initial in red and blue. The handwriting is more legible, too, which makes the glosses accessible and a connection between glosses and main text feasible. But even here, in such a well-structured manuscript, the glosses run over-length, with the last gloss extending into the bottom margin of the folio. So even if Digby 185 allows the reader to distinguish between separate glosses and thus different quotes, its scribe or rubricator did not find a way to clearly connect the glosses to the main text they correspond to. As a result, in this manuscript, too, the connection of marginal glosses and main text offer a reading similar to that in the editions, a reading that opens up ambiguities. Ashmole 40 is yet another interesting case. Here, the manuscript changes tactics in the course of the passage. The two glosses belonging to the first stanza are copied into the margin in red ink, with blue paraph marks. But then, as space becomes an issue starting with the second stanza, glosses are moved into the column of main text. Glosses are still written in red ink, but they are aligned to some of the structural premises of the main text: they, too, start with a blue enlarged initial letter, and they are structured into seven-line stanzas, despite being prose text. Both the second and third stanza of the passage quoted and discussed above are thus preceded by a gloss-stanza. The first of these two gloss-stanzas holds five glosses, the second one two.⁸⁶ Altogether, this happens five times in Ashmole 40, and interestingly, space does not seem to be an issue in all these cases.⁸⁷ Moving glosses around like this has two effects. First, making them part of the main text, even making them adhere to some of the structural

 Ashmole 40 is one of several manuscripts which feature an additional gloss, one that is recorded in neither Blyth’s nor in Furnivall’s edition. It reads “Ecclesiasticus xxv. Quam speciosa scientia et gloriosus intellectus” and is taken from Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) 25,7. A full rendering in a Vulgata-Bible is “Quam speciosa veteranis sapientia et gloriosis intellectus et consilium” (Nova Vulgata Bibliorum Sacrorum Editio (Rom: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1986), Eccl. 25,27.) A translation from Douay-Rheims reads: “O how comely is wisdom for the aged, and understanding and counsel to men of honour!” Edgar Swift, ed., The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation, Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library (Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2010 – 2013). Other manuscripts including this gloss are, for example, Bodley 221 and Laud Misc. 735.  On folio 92r, for example, two gloss-stanzas, written in red ink, are inserted into the text. Both times, it is only one longer gloss filling the space of a stanza, but both glosses would also have fit into the margins. The implications of placing these two glosses in the main text rather than in the margin as well as the scribal decision made here and the potential meaning we can ascribe to it must be the subject of another study.

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rules of a stanza, creates a whole new spatial tension. It is still not obvious which pieces of main text they belong to: should they be connected to the preceding or the following stanza? And then, which lines within these stanzas refer to which part of the seven-line conglomerate of a gloss? In the first of the two gloss-stanzas, the different glosses are separated by very fine, hardly discernible, parallel vertical lines, while the second gloss-stanza offers no marking of where the first gloss ends and the second one begins. So even this spatial re-location does not solve the problem of ascription that exists in all those manuscripts that include the glosses in the margin and make them pile up and run over length next to the main text. But Ashmole 40’s way of glossing has a more positive effect, too. Once understood that the gloss-stanza precedes the relating stanza of main text, the manuscript achieves something no other way of glossing manages to do: it ascribes the glosses to the correct stanza. This may not sound like a great achievement, but in comparison to the other manuscripts and the two editions, this is quite an improvement. There, already the second in the second stanza is assigned to a later and thus wrong line. Similar to a domino-effect, all later glosses are moved down the page, so that the last (and longest) of the eight glosses is situated two stanzas after the lines to which it originally belongs. This is not the case in Ashmole 40. Here, the distribution of glosses in relation to the stanzas is clear. One could say that in Ashmole 40, an unfeasible allocation of glosses to particular lines was sacrificed for the sake of a clear distribution of glosses in relation to the main text’s stanzas.

3.1.4 Commenting on a Culture of Glossing The most general result so far is that some of the marginal glosses that accompany the main text of the Regement create an interplay of these two texts that is first and foremost characterised by tension. One of the main reasons for this ambiguity are spatial issues and, related to them, textual tensions. The spatial situation on a manuscript- as well as a printed page, it shows, can influence the interplay between the two texts in crucial ways. As this chapter has shown so far, whenever a high number of glosses have to fit on one folio, the result is that the margins cannot accommodate all glosses in the correct position next to the corresponding lines of the main text. This means that glosses have to be moved further down on the folio and end up in the margin next to a completely different, unrelated line of main text. Such a random combination of main text and glosses holds the potential of creating ambiguous readings. In a passage like the one on accepting counsel, which comes with so many references and quotations, the glosses are moveable entities, and it turns out that scribes can be quite

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relentless when it comes to positioning glosses next to relating stanzas – and to distinguishing separate glosses in the first place. For readers, then, it is not always easy, if not impossible, to ascribe marginal glosses to particular lines in the main text. Next to the spatial restraints described above, this is also because the connection between text and gloss can be rather weak content-wise, too: not all quotations are translated directly into the Middle English text, which turns any attempt at allocation into a speculation. In the particular case of the chapter on how to accept counsel, it has been shown that the marginal glosses develop into an apparatus that becomes overpowering as the chapter progresses. The number and the length of some of the glosses result in a margin that seems to oppress the centre spatially at times. The analysis of several manuscripts shows that in this passage, the margins cannot accommodate the amount of glosses any more. Several scribal strategies to deal with the situation can be identified, most of which betray a certain degree of flexibility or, one could say, indecision or helplessness. No matter how glosses are positioned in relation to the main text in this example, they always offer an alternative, at times contradicting, voice to the main text. A second interesting result is that in this passage, the glossing apparatus is blown out of proportions through repetitive glosses that simply repeat the same point as the one before. These repetitions can be read as a commentary on the exaggerated importance ascribed to a culture that demands authorities without really caring about their meaning. In this culture, what counts are names and quantity rather than the quality of quotes and the way in which they can be applied to a particular text. But it was not only the spatial relation that opened up interesting readings of glosses and main text. A thorough look at the way in which these two texts relate content-wise and stylistically yields remarkable results, too. The stylistic difference of the Rehoboam-gloss is a good example: gloss and main text pursue and present the same matter in different styles. Roles seem to be reversed here, as the Latin gloss presents the content in a detailed and almost dramatic style while the main text merely mentions Rehoboam as an example without an in-depth presentation of the story. Both spatially and stylistically, the relation of glosses and main text here is full of tension and not at all as smooth and straightforward as scholars have long thought. Rather than exerting an ‘aura’, the Latin glossing apparatus complicates our perception of the main text. This highlights the rupture between the two texts and at the same time points readers’ attention to the problems and inconsistencies evolving from it. And as the practice of glossing comes with such a long tradition and strong implications of authority, this tradition is presented as one that does not always work out in a positive way. Chapters like the one on

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accepting counsel can thus be understood as tying in with the commonly known tradition, yet at the same time showing what a more thorough look reveals: other than lending authority, these forms of commentary can also disturb, distract and disagree.

3.2 Case Study II: Interpreting Authorities Glosinge in the second sense of the MED’s definition describes the process of interpreting a quote. This sub-chapter will study in how far the Regement employs the strategies of glosinge for political purposes. Sebastian Langdell’s study of Hoccleve’s Series shows how the narrator’s friend aims at supplying one simple, orthodox reading for an earlier of Hoccleve’s texts, the “Epistle of Cupid”. Langdell persuasively argues that possible readings are disregarded by the Friend who “insists on there being only one possible interpretation”.⁸⁸ The Friend’s attitude is read as “an attack on poetry’s ability to mean on a variety of levels”.⁸⁹ This ability of poetry is everything but under attack in the passage of the Regement studied here. On the contrary: it is exposed and employed in a purposeful way. That the term glosinge bears potential for conflict in the Lollard discussion has been mentioned above. Carolyn Dinshaw has shown us impressively that glosinge bears gendered connotations, too. She states that “woman is associated with the body and the text […] and is opposed to the gloss, written by men, learned, anti-pleasure, and anti-body.”⁹⁰ Literary activity in general, Dinshaw argues, is a structure that is inherently gendered, as it “associates acts of writing and related acts of signifying – allegorizing, interpreting, glossing, translating – with the masculine and […] identifies the surfaces on which these acts are performed, or from which these acts depart, or which these acts reveal – the page, the text, the literal sense, or even the hidden meaning – with the feminine.”⁹¹ This question of gender is inherent in the passage of the Regement that will be discussed in the following section, but it also plays a major role for a parallel passage that will be set into relation with it.

 Sebastian James Langdell, “‘What World Is This? How Vndirstande Am I?’ A Reappraisal of Poetic Authority in Thomas Hoccleve’s Series,” Medium Ævum 78:2 (2009): p. 282.  Ibid.  Caroline Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), p. 114.  Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, p. 9.

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The Regement’s passage is an excerpt from the chapter “On Peace”. This excerpt first mentions Adam and Eve as an example for disorderly peace, but then quickly develops into a quasi-academic debate which discusses the question of female superiority. In this debate, the narrator takes up and further elaborates the arguments and textual methods that we also find in a number of Chaucer’s texts, most of all in the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, which will be used as a point of comparison in the following examination of the Regement’s passage. I will show that the narrator even takes these arguments to a more extreme point at which the Regement exceeds the discussion of female maistrie and instead stages the collapse of a debate through the loss of authority. In other words, while the Wife of Bath is aware of and shows how academic and religious textual practices work, Hoccleve’s narrator demonstrates how they are applied to a degree where they do not work anymore at all. This gains even more in importance when seen within the generic frame of the Regement: towards the end my discussion will turn to the political and literary impact which emanates from such a subversive use of metatextuality in a text that stands in the tradition of advice literature.

3.2.1 Glossing and Debating Female Maistrie Catherine Batt is not the only scholar to note what she calls “Hoccleve’s ambivalence on the subject” of women.⁹² And, indeed, the Regement is not the only one of Hoccleve’s text to display indetermination when it comes to this issue: the “Letter of Cupid” as well as the Series, for example, avoids a clear position in this matter in a similar way. I suggest that in Hoccleve’s works the anti-feminist debate serves the purpose of exploring the instability of textual authority as well as the limitations of hermeneutical methods. It is not the ambivalence of Hoccleve’s own stance that matters so much, but rather the way that he pits authorities against each other and quotes sources in a way that leaves them void of meaning. This makes it ultimately impossible to resolve the issue of Hoccleve’s (anti‐) feminism. The so-called “feminism-debate” in the Regement is situated in the chapter on peace. After an enumeration of three factors that lead to peace, the narrator starts talking about “feyned pees”,⁹³ wrong peace, and then moves on to “pees

 Catherine Batt, “Hoccleve and … Feminism? Negotiating Meaning in The Regement of Princes,” in Essays on Thomas Hoccleve, ed. by Catherine Batt (London: Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London, 1996), p. 69.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 5076.

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inordinat”,⁹⁴ disorderly peace, which happens “[w]han the gretter obeieth to the lesse”.⁹⁵ What follows is the standard example of disorderly peace commonly used in the Middle Ages, the case of Adam and Eve: Right swich a pees Adam hadde with Eeve Whan that he unto hir desir obeide; He was par cas adrad hire for to greeve, Wherfore he dide as that shee him seide. In that obedience he foleide, For God hire him bytook him to obeye;⁹⁶

The last line of this passage presents the commonplace position that women should be subordinate to their husbands: “For God hire him bytook him to obeye”. First, however, the narrator describes the kind of disorder that characterises this “pees inordinat”. This description is extended over five lines, all of which repeat the same reason for disorderly peace: Adam and Eve had this kind of peace when he obeyed her wishes. The next line (l. 5099) offers speculation as to why he obeyed her: He may have been afraid to vex her. The sentence is not over yet, however, because the next line repeats the effect of this speculative reason: He was afraid to vex her, and because of this he did as she told him. But still, his mistake has not been mentioned and explained often enough: line 5101 repeats once more that through this obedience he acted foolishly. His mistake and thus his guilt, it seems, are not only emphasised and brought to the readers’ attention, but they are also textually prolonged and amplified. Only after dwelling on this point over five lines, the stanza abandons all suspension and reaches the real kernel of the matter: What makes Adam’s actions even more foolish is that his wife was made to obey him, not the other way round. This increases Adam’s foolhardiness, because he obeyed when really it was not necessary – but at the same time it also identifies Eve as the ultimate source of “pees inordinat”. After all, her subordination was God’s will, and who can argue with God’s will? Medieval discussions of Adam, Eve, and the original sin hardly ever go without a quote from the Bible. The most obvious choice of a marginal gloss here would be a quotation from Genesis like “thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee.”⁹⁷ And indeed, many manuscripts

   

Ibid., l. 5090. Ibid., l. 5091. Ibid., ll. 5097– 5102. Swift, The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation, Genesis 3,16.

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of the Regement do contain a marginal gloss next to this stanza. But it is not the fitting quote from Genesis. Rather, the marginal gloss reads “Contra talem pacem loquitur, Christus Matthaei 10: Non veni, inquit, pacem mittere sed gladium, et cetera” (Against such a peace Christ speaks, Matthew 10 [34]: I came not, he said, to send peace but the sword, etc.).⁹⁸ The chapter Matthew 10 mentions the word ‘peace’ in quite a different context. It is about Christ who sends out his apostles to preach and work miracles. He warns them that they will encounter many people who will not behave friendly towards them. But, Christ goes on to say, and here with some goodwill one could find the topic of absent peace, there will be much discord between those who do believe in Christ and those who do not: Every one therefore that shall confess me before men, I will also confess him before my Father who is in heaven. But he that shall deny me before men, I will also deny him before my Father who is in heaven. Do not think that I came to send peace upon earth: I came not to send peace, but the sword. For I came to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s enemies shall be they of his own household. He that loveth father or mother more than me, is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son or daughter more than me, is not worthy of me.⁹⁹

Taking the wider context of the quoted sentence into account, one could indeed find a connection between the Regement’s Middle English main text and Matthew 10: the Middle English line “in that obedience he foleide” read before the background of Matthew 10 might mean that Adam was foolish not because he obeyed a woman, but because he loved her more than Christ (rather anachronistically). Adam would then be a parallel example to those people described in Matthew 10 who love their family members more than Christ and are to be punished. But this kind of reading involves much background knowledge. Those readers who do not know Matthew 10 by heart and who are confronted with what is on the page only, could interpret this combination of gloss and main text quite differently: When we only consider the short quoted excerpt from Matthew 10, “I came not, he said, to send peace but the sword, etc.” rather than the whole chapter, then the content of the gloss does not connect all that easily to the content of the main text. The only connection is established through the sentence that introduces the quote in the gloss: “Against such a peace Christ speaks”, which is not part of Matthew 10 but an addition. The gloss, spatially

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, p. 249 (gloss accompanying l. 5101, the translation is Blyth’s).  Swift, The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation, Gospel of St. Matthew 10, 32– 37.

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separated from the main text, could here function as a reaction or a commentary to Adam and his obedience to his wife. It can be read as a belated piece of advice the narrator offers to poor hen-pecked Adam, who is told in Christ’s voice that rather than being peaceful and – in Adam’s case – yielding, he should fight back adamantly. The feminism-debate thus starts out with six lines that are voiced by a narrator who clearly (one could say: violently) presents the common opinion that women should be subordinate to their husbands. It comes as a surprise when in the very last line of this first stanza the debate turns a completely different way. The narrator claims that he is afraid of women’s reactions to his text: “But I adrad am that I thus fer seye. / If that this come unto the audience / Of wommen, I am seur I shal be shent.”¹⁰⁰ He then describes how women of his time expect to be equal to their husbands. On retracting what he said, the narrator does exactly what he accused Adam of doing only a few lines before: he subjects himself to the will or taste of women. So the narrator foleide just as much as foolish Adam did, whom he seems to have told in his gloss that he should stand up for his male supremacy. The narrator – a man of all talk and no action – thus presents himself in a bad light, when as a result of this fear of women he completely changes his mind about female maistrie: And it no wondir is, as seemeth me, Whan that I me bethoght have al aboute, Thogh that wommen desyre sovereyntee, And hire housbondes make to hem loute.¹⁰¹

These four lines initiate a debate in which the narrator now fully supports the view that women are superior to men. The word “Thogh” in line 5113, however, disrupts the reading of the stanza and adds a moment of hesitation. The MED tells us that “in specific contexts, following a clause expressing wonder”, the construction “thogh that” can mean simply “that”.¹⁰² At the same time, however, and still according to the MED, the combination “thogh that” can also be “introducing a clearly impossible or contrary-to-fact condition”.¹⁰³ Formally, then, the stanza can be understood and translated in two opposing ways, one of which is syntactically improbable, however. Syntactically sound is the following para-

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 5103 – 5105.  Ibid., ll. 5111– 5114.  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=byte&byte=212260700&egdisplay=compact, see especially section number 6 [last accessed August 24, 2016].  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?type=byte&byte=212260700&egdisplay=compact, see especially section number 2.a (c) [last accessed August 24, 2016].

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phrase: “I have thought about this, and now I am not astonished any more that women want to be superior”. While in this form, it ascribes dominance to women, the second, hypothetical reading would turn it into the complete opposite. This reading requires that after line 5114, “and hire housbondes make to hem loute”, another clause follows that qualifies what has been said before. The sentence could then hypothetically be paraphrased as follows: “I have thought about this, and now I am not astonished any more, even though women want to be superior, *to see that they are still subordinate to men*”. (The last clause marked by asterisks is the invented hypothetical addition that qualifies what was said before.) Because this latter, rather negative use of “thogh that” is not ruled out until the very last line of this stanza, the sentence remains unresolved until its end, when the full stop after “loute” clarifies that “thogh that” means “that” and not “even though”. The word “thogh” thus adds a moment of hesitation, of openness to this crucial point of the debate. In these lines of indecision, the debate could go either way. This moment of indecisiveness is heightened through the narrator’s earlier sway in opinion: because he has proven before that his position can shift suddenly from contrawomen to pro-women, he could indeed lead the debate into both directions at this point. This does not happen, however. The narrator sticks to the prowomen side for the rest of the discussion. But this does not mean that the reader only gets to hear pro-women arguments. Instead, the narrator argues women’s case in the style of an academic disputatio, offering arguments from both sides, but always making clear which side he is on. The structure of a debate is mirrored in the formulas which remind us of the stock phrases used in disputationes: the Regement’s narrator declares that “sum men seyn”,¹⁰⁴ or that “sum nyce men, of lewdenesse, / In repreef of hem holden thereageyn, […] [b]ut ageyn that, strongly wole I replie”.¹⁰⁵ These sentences are strikingly similar to phrases used in academic or philosophical debates of Antiquity and the earlier Middle Ages. Baswell mentions Sedulius Scottus’s commentary on Donatus Maior, which uses stock sentences like “It is asked how the differences among the above definitions can be understood… To which we would say…”.¹⁰⁶ As Baswell observes, this kind of debate “is never a neutral medium for transferring information. It is also a site of social power”.¹⁰⁷ This power not

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 5110.  Ibid., ll. 5120 – 5124.  Latin original: “Quaeritur etiam quomodo possit cognosci differentia in supradictis definitionibus…Ad quod dicendum…,” Baswell, “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature,” p. 125.  Ibid.

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only refers to the power exerted by a master over a student but also, and possibly even more so, to the power a reader has over the interpretation of a text. This can be detected in the case of Hoccleve’s debate on female maistrie, too, where the Bible and the story of Adam’s and Eve’s creation is read as support for both sides of the discussion:¹⁰⁸ The narrator starts out this debate by stating – in support of female maistrie – that women were made out of a strong, solid rib, which is much better than being created of slime and earth like men. He then offers the potential counterargument which can be summarised as “crooked rib means crooked moral”. This counterargument is in turn refuted with the argument that a crooked rib is a segment of a circle, which is the perfect shape and thus proves the superiority of women. But this is not the end of the debate. More arguments in support of female maistrie are offered by the narrator. Every single argument is made explicit in its purpose, which emphasises the debate-structure. The narrator thus ends one argument and begins the next one with the words “but or I go, / Yit shal I bet wommannes part susteene; / So biddith pees, and that to folwe I meene.”¹⁰⁹ In this accumulative way, several arguments are brought forward to support women’s case. The narrator lays open the structure of a debate and performs the process of exegesis when he uses one aspect (Eve’s crooked rib) for arguments both in favour of and against female maistrie. While in this passage of the debate, the work with authoritative sources has been shown to be ambiguous and at times rather inconclusive, the end of the debate takes this ambiguity to an even higher level. The last two stanzas of the debate start with a biblical quotation: Holy Writ seith, “If wommen sovereyntee Of hir housbondes have, how that they Unto hir housbondes contrarious be…” The text, I woot wel, is swich, but what they? That text I undirstonde thus alwey: Whan that housbondes hem mistake and erre, Ageyn that vice wyves maken werre. Thogh a womman hir housbonde contrarie In his opinioun erroneous, Shul man for that deeme hir his adversarie? Straw! Be he nevere so harrageous, If he and shee shul dwellen in oon hous,

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 5115 – 5144.  Ibid., ll. 5143 – 5145.

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Good is he suffre; therby pees may sprynge; Housbondes pees is peisible suffrynge.¹¹⁰

Lines 5184 and 5185 create a rupture in our reading, a rupture that is not to be missed. Through the narrator’s statement “I know that this is the text, but what does it mean?” we find ourselves on a metatextual level of the discussion on which the narrator prepares us for the interpretation that is to follow. The quote from the Bible discussed here is actually quite straightforward and presented both in the Middle English main text and in the corresponding Latin marginal gloss. It could be paraphrased as: “Women who are superior to their husbands are rebellious” and thus relates back to the beginning of the debate when the narrator still appeared to be holding this opinion himself. But the narrator seems to be uncertain as to what the passage means. He offers his own interpretation which is the opposite of what I would call the more overt reading of the quotation. His interpretation is, again, presented in much detail. It starts out by ascribing the reason for women’s opposition to the husbands’ misbehaviour: “Whan that housbondes hem mistake and erre”, then the wives take action against that misbehaviour. That the narrator thinks this action very much justified resonates in these two lines. This presupposition of a husband’s misconduct and the wife’s understandable reaction is extended over the next full stanza, which is the last stanza of the debate on female maistrie. There is a new and very prominent aspect introduced in these seven lines: even if husbands deem their wives’ behaviour wrong and adversary, they should not take any actions against their wives – they should be “nevere so harrageous”. On the contrary: “Good is he suffre; therby pees may sprynge; / Housbondes pees is peisible suffrynge.” Especially the oxymoron “peaceful suffering” that constitutes the very last words of the debate on female maistrie sums up the narrator’s interpretation of the biblical source in an impressive way: it is the husbands’ duty to suffer their wives’ contradictions for the sake of domestic peace, even if the wives are in the wrong. On a metatextual level, these two stanzas constitute three steps to show how exegetical readings can twist a text’s meaning and can thus be applied for one’s particular purposes: in the first three lines, the narrator presents a quote (including a fitting Latin marginal gloss) which states a straightforward opinion against women’s superiority. The narrator then, in a second step, announces that he does not know what this means and leads over to his own interpretation. This announcement raises expectations of exegetical wisdom. These expectations are

 Ibid., ll. 5181– 5194 [highlights are my own].

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met by the third step: the narrator’s reading which stands in complete opposition to the obvious meaning of the biblical quote. This contrast can only be achieved by inventing a just cause for the wives’ resistance. This obviously invented cause is found in presupposing that the husbands made mistakes, which justify the wives’ resistance. And following the now acceptable superiority of women, the husbands’ role is developed further until the debate reaches its climatic end in “peisible suffrynge.” In these three steps, the narrator demonstrates how one quote can be turned around until it seems to mean the complete opposite. This demonstration of textual openness and interpretational freedom, however, is taken too far when the narrator invents a justification that it just too obviously artificial and exaggerated. What is more: By claiming that he cannot understand the rather simple biblical quotation, and by then twisting its meaning using an obviously artificial case, the narrator is caught in the act of “glosen, up and doun”, as Alisoun, the Wife of Bath, calls it.¹¹¹ He is revealed to be a man who manages to turn the meaning of a text around, and, following this, a man who is not to be trusted with texts, an unreliable reader, an unreliable exegete, and ultimately an unreliable counsellor.

3.2.2 Alisoun Revisited In her study “Hoccleve and … Feminism?”, Catherine Batt notes the strong link between this passage on peace in a marriage – a peace which, according to the narrator, comes from female superiority and male subordination, to put Hoccleve’s discussion in a nutshell – and the Wife of Bath’s prologue: When quoting four lines of Hoccleve’s debate, Batt notes that “though they do not claim to be her [i. e. Alisoun’s] voice, [they] echo the Wife of Bath in ideology – women want sovereignty – and in ideolect”.¹¹² The Wife of Bath, Alisoun, is a favourite Chaucerian pilgrim for scholarly discussion. She has been referred to as an exegete that is “hopelessly carnal and literal”,¹¹³ an “arch-wife”,¹¹⁴ one who “abuses” au-

 Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale,” in The Riverside Chaucer, ed. by C. David Benson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), l. 26.  Batt, “Hoccleve and … Feminism? Negotiating Meaning in The Regement of Princes,” p. 77, emphasis original.  D. W. Robertson Jr., A Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1962), p. 317.  F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 7b.

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thoritative texts,¹¹⁵ and she has been described as a “human “text” struggling against the restrictive, negative gloss that others have sought to impose upon her and upon women in general.”¹¹⁶ Theresa Tinkle connects Alisoun to the discourse on heresy and Lollardy when she says that the Wife is a “provocative exegete in an age filled with controversies over lay access to vernacular scripture”.¹¹⁷ And Carolyn Dinshaw calls her the “excluded Other, [who] explicitly and affirmatively assumes the place that patriarchal discourse accords the feminine.”¹¹⁸ Both marginal glosses and the process of glosinge are central topics of scholarly studies of Alisoun’s prologue and tale, because her text itself discusses textual authorities and the way of reading and interpreting. Despite her insistence that she is guided by her experiences and not by books and authorities, the Wife of Bath bases much of her argument on texts rather than on her life.¹¹⁹ She takes up the contents of her husband Jenkyn’s book and uses them for her description of her first three marriages. Thus, she claims a misogynist discourse for her own purposes and, as Baswell puts it, “[b]riefly, Alisoun gets to paint the lion.”¹²⁰ In doing so, she handles not only the techniques of exegesis and debate with flying colours, but she actually, as Warren S. Smith claims, “arrives at a humorously presented but reasonable, balanced, and, in basic outline, even Augustinian view of celibacy and marriage that triumphantly defends a literalist interpretation of the Bible against the mischief of its male glossators.”¹²¹ But while the Wife of Bath is appropriating textual authorities for her purposes, she is under fire from the margins, attacked by “a conservative, Latinate, and specifically

 “An interpretation of her “Prologue” and therefore of her character depends on our ability to recall the text abused […]”: Caie, “The Significance of Marginal Glosses in the Earliest Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales,” p. 75.  Hanning, “‘I Shall Fine it in a Maner Glose’: Versions of Textual Harrassment in Medieval Literature,” p. 45. Theresa Tinkle more recently studied scribal reactions in the margins of a number of manuscripts. She shows that not all reactions are to be evaluated as negatively as Hanning suggests.  Theresa Tinkle, “The Wife of Bath’’s Marginal Authority,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 32 (2010), 70. Alisoun’s Lollard tendencies are not only discussed in Tinkle’s article, but also in Alcuin Blamires, “The Wife of Bath and Lollardy,” Medium Aevum 58 (1989): pp. 224– 242.  Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, p. 115.  Hanning, “‘I Shall Fine it in a Maner Glose’: Versions of Textual Harrassment in Medieval Literature,” p. 45.  Baswell, “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature,” p. 145.  Warren S. Smith, “The Wife of Bath and Dorigen Debate Jerome,” in Satiric Advice on Women and Marriage: from Plautus to Chaucer, ed. by Warren S. Smith (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2004), p. 245.

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masculine voice”.¹²² This attempt of reconquest from the margins is especially visible in the famous Ellesmere manuscript, which is rather scarcely glossed – until the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue”, “where the marginalia are suddenly in far greater evidence than anywhere else in the manuscript.”¹²³ These glosses cite Latin sources, amongst others Church Fathers whose stance towards women is less than friendly. Susan Schibanoff argues along the same lines, but adds another facet to the study of the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue”: Alisoun’s appropriation of learned debates and exegetical techniques ties in with a particular medieval gender discourse in which it is not necessarily the sexual woman who gets attacked my male glossators, but the reading and interpreting woman: “Significantly, it is not the Wife’s sexuality per se that draws the Egerton glossator’s heaviest fire but her ‘textuality’, her insistence on the right to interpret Scripture.”¹²⁴ The close connection between the Regement’s display of interpretational freedom and textual openness on the one hand and the Wife of Bath’s prologue on the other hand becomes clear in a number of ways. The most explicit intertextual reference is that between the Regement’s line “That text I undirstonde thus alwey”¹²⁵ and the Wife of Bath’s assertion that “That gentil text kan I wel understonde”.¹²⁶ It is worthwhile taking a closer look at what Alisoun does in her passage. Biside a welle, Jhesus, God and man, Spak in repreeve of the Samaritan: ‘Thou hast yhad five housbondes,’ quod he, ‘And that ilke man that now hath thee Is noght thyn housbonde,’ thus seyde he certeyn. What that he mente therby, I kan nat seyn; But that I axe, why that the fifthe man Was noon housbonde to the Samaritan? How manye mighte she have in marriage? Yet herde I nevere tellen in myn age Upon this nombre diffinicioun. Men may devyne and glosen, up and doun, But wel I woot, expres, withoute lye,

 Baswell, “Talking Back to the Text: Marginal Voices in Medieval Secular Literature,” p. 141.  Ibid., p. 146.  Susan Schibanoff, “The New Reader and Feminine Textuality in Two Early Commentaries on Chaucer,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): p. 84.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 5185.  Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale,” l. 29.

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God bad us for to wexe and multiplye; That gentil text kan I wel understonde. ¹²⁷

At first glance, the parallel between the Wife’s dealing with quotes and that displayed by the narrator is obvious: like the narrator, she quotes a passage from the Bible and asserts that she cannot understand what it means. As the example from the Bible might be just a little too close to her own life and as her reaction to it is presented as rather final and abrupt, the text seems to imply that she really does not want to understand what the sentence means. But rather than inventing an interpretation that fits the quote like done by the narrator Hoccleve, Alisoun comes up with another quote, and this text she can understand perfectly well, without the help of those who interpret, those who “glosen, up and doune”. The Wife shows how one can always find a supporting quote for every opinion – and, indeed, how one needs to find a supporting quote, because an unsupported argument is not persuasive enough. This becomes clear when she refutes the positions that one should not marry several times and unmarried women should remain virgins. Alisoun argues that these opinions are not valid because no biblical source can be found to support them: Wher can ye seye, in any manere age, That hye God defended marriage By expres word? I pray yow, telleth me. Or where commanded he virginitee? I woot as wel as ye, it is no drede, Th’apostel, whan he speketh of maydenhede, He seyde that precept therof hadde he noon.¹²⁸

A text’s and an argument’s dependence on authoritative sources is the focus of this passage: in a culture of disputatio, an opinion that remains unsupported is void of persuasiveness. Alisoun is aware of these boundaries of exegesis and employs them for her purposes: She is “but mimicking the methods of those late glossators whom Henry de Lubac describes as ‘pulverizing’ the text (suppressing parts of passages, distorting and rearranging texts) to fit their schemes”,¹²⁹ in short, she repeats “the masculine hermeneutic moves”.¹³⁰ Altogether, she can be seen as one instantiation of what Alcuin Blamires calls “Chaucer’s distinctive interest in how people quote, use, ply, and misappropriate or ‘harass’ written    

Ibid., ll. 15 – 29, my emphasis. Ibid., ll. 59 – 65. Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, p. 124. Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, p. 120.

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auctoritee”.¹³¹ The narrator in the Regement takes up this knowledge and performs it, as we have seen in the example of the crooked rib, which was used to support both sides of the debate. So far, Chaucer’s handwriting can be well recognized in Hoccleve’s debate on female maistrie. Both the narrator and Alisoun perform the strategies of exegesis and show their awareness of the limitations of these strategies. In this sense, both texts are not only performances of, but also commentaries on the culture of exegetical reading as well as on the limitations inherent in these processes. In his discussion of the Wife of Bath and the way she quotes the Bible for her own purposes, Lee Patterson claims that “by offering a redefinition of reading – a way to make meaning that avoids the preemptions of Augustinian hermeneutics – the Wife of Bath is engaged in a project that is central to the poetic of the Canterbury Tales as a whole. For she offers a mode of reading that is at once literal and moral; and she insists that interpretation must be deferred, that meaning (whether literary or personal) is available only at the end (whether of a narrative or a life).”¹³² While, according to Patterson, Alisoun opens up the interpretative process and withholds the expected interpretation that seems to be straightforward and the easiest way to read and understand a text, I argue that the Regement exceeds the “Wife of Bath’s Prologue” and takes the discussion of textual authority and of exegesis to a level where the methods are presented as non-functional. One aspect of the Regement’s discussion of female maistrie serves best as an example: its play with circularity.

3.2.3 Circularity and the Limits of Exegesis Looking at the overall structure of the Regement’s debate on female maistrie, the passage on the shape of the crooked rib stands out because it dwells on this point for quite some time and in a repetitive mode. In this step of the argument, the narrator argues that because the crooked rib can be seen as a segment of a circle, which is the perfect form, women must be seen as superior to men. The passage as a whole stretches over three stanzas: For in the wrytyng and in the scripture Of philosophres, men may see and rede, Cerclely shap is moost parfyt figure,

 Blamires, “The Wife of Bath and Lollardy,” p. 237.  Lee Patterson, Chaucer and the Subject of History (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), p. 316.

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Betokenyng in gemetrie onhede; And crookidnesse a part is that may lede Sumwhat unto a cercle or a compas. What so men seyn, wommen stonde in good cas. For therby shewith it that crookidnesse Strecchith unto gretter perfeccioun Than dooth a thyng that is of evennesse. Of this helpith no contradiccioun, For it is sooth; it is no ficcioun. Every parfyt body that man can nevene Is rownd and crookid and nat streight ne evene. Begynne first at hevene and rownd it is; The sonne and moone and the sterres also; Heed of man, yen, mowth, and herte, ywis, Been al rownde; and othir been ther mo Than I expresse as now; […]¹³³

The first stanza raises the topic of perfect circularity as an answer to the counterargument that a crooked rib stands for a crooked moral. The last sentence of the stanza, “What so men seyn, wommen stonde in good cas” seems to bring the argument to a conclusion: a point was made, sources (“philosophres”) were invoked, the argument may be considered finished. But then, the second stanza takes up the idea again and builds one affirmation onto the other: “therby shewith it” – “of this helpith no contradiccioun” – “for it is sooth” – “it is no ficcioun”. One clause of conviction is added to the next. And in addition the sexual innuendo of round vs. “thyng that is of evennesse” certainly supports the argument of female superiority vs. male subordination on yet another, humorous, level. And as if this was not enough, the third stanza offers a few examples for round, and thus perfect, things. The concept of perfect circularity is thus dwelt upon until the last reader understands that round equals perfect. The significance of this becomes clear once we reach the end of the debate on female maistrie. It ends with the following last few lines: “If he and shee shul dwellen in oon hous, / Good is he suffre; therby pees may sprynge; / Housbondes pees is peisible suffrynge”.¹³⁴ These last lines refer back to the debate’s beginning discussed earlier. Here, in the first stanza, the description of Adam’s submission to Eve’s wishes evokes the problematic power balance in a marriage that also forms the topic of the last stanzas – with one crucial difference: while in the first stanza of the debate, Adam’s behaviour is described as foolish, the ending

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 5125 – 5143.  Ibid., ll. 5192– 5194.

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proclaims that the same behaviour is absolutely necessary for marital peace. The two passages thus express contrary positions, but in their contrariness, both passages touch on the same topic: husbands’ submission to their wives or, in a broader sense, power relations in a marriage. Thematically, the debate thus ends where it began, albeit at the other end of the possible range of opinions. As this is a debate, however, the alternation of arguments for and against the issue of female maistrie allows for a connection between the two positions to be made: The beginning of the debate could be used as a counter-argument for the postulated male submission that we find in the last stanza. In other words: once we have reached the end, we could start all over from the beginning with the commonplace opinion that women were created to obey. Catherine Batt notes how the closing lines of the passage on female maistrie offer “a chiasmus ironically reversing the original remarks on unruly peace”.¹³⁵ More than this, I argue that this reversing reference back to the beginning of the chapter on “pees inordinat” shapes the discussion into a circle in which beginning and ending blend into each other. This leads to a debate that is structured like the “moost parfyt figure”, the perfect shape according to the text. But while structurally this debate and its performance of circularity could be regarded as successful, things look different on the content-level. After all, circles have no beginning and no end, so consequently the debate is also infinite and remains without a solution. The question of what peace in a marriage means – female superiority or female subordination, remains open and unanswered. But it is not only its infinity, the impossibility of a solution that makes the feminism-debate everything but a perfect one. It is also the narrator’s performance of exegetical methods and practices that add to this effect. He shows how the debate on female maistrie is taken to a point where the use of authorities, of quotations and sources, becomes void of meaning. This happens, for example, when a quotation is used to support both sides of a discussion, or when the narrator ascribes meaning to a quotation that is quite evidently not inherent in it. Authorities of such a kind cannot fulfil their supportive function and they fail to bring the debate to a point where one side might actually prevail. Rather, they are forces that condemn the debate to become one that runs on and on without ever reaching an end – they lead into endlessness and circularity.

 Batt, “Hoccleve and … Feminism? Negotiating Meaning in The Regement of Princes,” p. 77.

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3.2.4 Political Implications of the Practice of Glosinge Authority plays an important role in the Regement of Princes. Latin marginal glosses are employed to supplement and comment on the main text. At first glance and as a visual signal, the glossing apparatus evokes the tradition and authority that seems to be necessary to support the didactic message in a Fürstenspiegel text. But at second glance, things are not as simple, as the chapter on the acceptance of counsel makes clear: here, the apparatus becomes overpowering, the balance is destroyed spatially and then, as I have shown, stylistically and regarding the content, too. Marginal glosses often are at odds with the main text over how to understand particular passages. This can have a variety of reasons: on the one hand, it can be based on the parameters offered by the manuscript themselves: Restraints of space at times move glosses further down along the page so that the gloss ends up being situated next to a line or stanza of main text where it does not fit content-wise. On the other hand, main text and glosses do not correspond textually, on a stylisic or a content-level: Translations into the Middle English main text at times emphasise a different point than the Latin original gloss does. As I have shown in the first part of this chapter, this leads to interesting, often puzzling, ways of understanding the main text in relation to the glosses. The debate on female superiority takes up these relations full of tension and applies them on a more generel level. By quoting and interpreting authorities in quasi-academic debates, the text performs the strategies of exegesis, but does so in a way that shows how empty of meaning these quotations are, because they can be twisted in order to support both competing sides. So rather than being concerned with how single glosses relate to particular lines of the main text, this second part of the chapter has studied the interpretation of texts in general. Ultimately, this open and at times ambiguous relation between main text and its forms of glosinge reflects back on the Regement as a whole. This Fürstenspiegel text that comes with the function of counselling, giving advice – in other words: as an authority – demonstrates how authorities can be destabilised, decontextualised, and demystified. Every point supported with a quote from an authoritative source can be countered with another quote from the same text. In a similar way, every quote can be used to support both sides of an argument quite easily – or is empty of meaning because it is too general. But the function of counsel literature is tightly knit to a claim of textual clarity. A mirror for princes has to express its instructional message clearly; any ambiguity is counterproductive. This does not mean, however, that arguments for and against a particular point cannot be weighed against each other at all. But they should, ideally,

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reach a conclusion and offer a clear result culminating in a piece of advice. The Regement is thus reliant on an easy-to-apply style that gives clear guidance and leaves no room for doubts and ambiguities. Especially the chapter on how to accept counsel works on a metafictional level. Yet this chapter, too, presents the reader with ambiguity. It first emphasises how important, if not essential, counsel is for any prince and future ruler. And at the same time it features glosses that stand in an unclear relation to the main text. And the debate on female maistrie, in a similar way, lays open how authorities can be manipulated easily. Kantik Ghosh discusses the dialogic debate structure as employed in academic disputationes. He shows that the structure in itself is a dialogic one or, to be more precise, a dialogue which incorporates and accommodates “contradiction and conflict”.¹³⁶ In the Regement’s feminism-debate, this kind of dialogic structure is combined with a performance of exegetical practices that demonstrates how open and unreliable textual authorities can be: First, it shows that quotations and their sources can be invoked as support of as well as as refutation of an argument. Second, it demonstrates how exegetical practice always depends on human efforts, and thus on personal opinions that can, as in Alisoun’s case, influence our attitude towards interpreting texts. And third, it features exegetical methods that lead a discussion into circularity, into an endless exchange of arguments. Ultimately, this means that textual authority quoted in such debates, but also ascribed to them, loses its power and should be encountered with caution. And it is not a big step from the authority in and of an academic disputatio to the political function of a mirror for princes, especially if this disputatio is part of such a didactic text. So how are we to evaluate the counsel the Regement sets out to give? A radical implication would be to believe that the text denies itself any claim to applicability and that the feminism-debate is to be read as proof that the Regement, and indeed every example of counsel literature, does not have any form of authority inherent in it. Instead, the Regement and especially the two passages studied here show that texts can and, indeed, always have to be employed and worked with in order to reveal some kind of meaning. This is what Larry Scanlon means when he says that the authority of texts has a “performative aspect” and “must always be reproduced”.¹³⁷ I believe that the feminism-debate in Hoccleve’s Regement not only shows an awareness of these processes, but that it employs them in a manner to lay open the limitations of exegesis, showing how

 Ghosh, The Wycliffite Heresy: Authority and the Interpretation of Texts, p. 6.  Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition, p. 26.

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sources are employed in a way that leaves them void of meaning. In addition, the debate is lead into circularity, which prevents any solution and at the same time makes the Regement a didactic text without any clear didactic message. This lack of clarity is further emphasized in an almost comical way through the presence of a narrator who presents himself in a particularly unfavourable light as well. He switches his position very easily – and for all the wrong reasons: He explicitly changes his opinion not because he weighed up all the arguments and then decided which side he wanted to be on, but because he is afraid of women’s reactions. He is thus guided by a rationale that has nothing to do with the persuasiveness of sources or the strength of arguments, but only with his urge for personal security. His actions are based on principles that are not worthy of a learned and wise person – or of a counsellor at that. And there is yet another level on which the Regement’s function as a didactic text is undermined. Judith Ferster describes mirrors for princes as “compilations of platitudes, clichés, and ancient stories so general, so distant in time and place, and so inert that they have no bearing on political concerns contemporary with their writers”.¹³⁸ But it is not only the temporal distance that makes the exempla difficult to be applied to the lives of later readers. Ferster states that these stories are “timeless only because empty.”¹³⁹ Indeed, pieces of advice like “choose only wise counsellors” are hardly helpful. In combination with a narrator who repeatedly undermines his own suitability as a counsellor, the text also undermines its own suitability as a counsel text. Again, and this ties in with the preceding chapter, text and narrator are connected performatively.

 Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England, p. 2.  Ibid.

4 “Of his persone, I have heere his liknesse Do make”¹: Mediality and Conceptions of Authorship in the Regement of Princes The relation between text and images in medieval manuscripts has been the subject of much scholarly attention. Scholars from different disciplines studied it from various perspectives. Art historians, for example, commonly discuss illuminated manuscripts in the context of book production: Studies on medieval artists and their works as well as pictorial programmes yield insight into the conditions and the networks of medieval illuminators’ workshops. In manuscript studies, the relation between text and image is tightly bound to the book’s place and time of production, its (alleged) purpose and its audiences. Modern literary scholars have for a long time neglected images in illuminated manuscripts for one simple reason: they were not part of the editions literary scholars usually work with. Editions of well-known works such as Sir Gawain and the Green Knight may mention the four miniatures in the introduction, and very seldom even reproduce them in black and white, but the images will hardly ever be included in the edition as part of the text itself, in the position where they are also found in Cotton Nero A.x.² Philological enterprises have traditionally focussed  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 4995.  Out of the editions consulted, only one contains black and white copies of all four images, even with a short summary of the depicted scenes. But even here, the images are added like an appendix and not integrated in the text: The Pearl Poems: An Omnibus Edition, ed. by William Vantuono, vol. 2: Patience and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1984). Other editions briefly mention the images in the introduction: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Re-edited from MS. Cotton Nero A.x., in the British Museum, ed. by Sir Israel Gollancz, Early English Text Society (London: Oxford University Press, 1940); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by J. R. R. Tolkien and E. V. Gordon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by Theodore Silverstein (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1984); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by Marie Borroff and Laura L. Howes, trans. by Marie Borroff (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 2010); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, ed. by J. J. Anderson (London and North Clarendon, VT: Everyman, 1976), (Anderson’s edition even has part of one image on its cover). An astonishingly high number of editions does not mention the images at all: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by J. A. Burrow (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1972); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by Richard H. Osberg (New York et al.: Peter Lang, 1990); The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1996); Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, ed. by W. R. J. Barron, trans. by W. R. J. Barron (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2001). DOI 10.1515/9783110523089-004

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on re-constructing affiliations amongst manuscripts and searching for the Urtext that is free of textual variants. The ultimate aim of these endeavours was to stabilise the tradition of a given literary text. Only with Paul Zumthor, Bernard Cerquiglini and, more recently, Stephen G. Nichols’s Material Philology did the manuscript as a site of variance and interaction between different elements – among them illuminations, sketches and other visual elements – come back into focus.³ Images in a manuscript are part of what Nichols calls “a collaborative effort bespeaking the social, commercial, and intellectual organization of a specific moment in time, on the one hand, and a recognizable set of practices over time, on the other.”⁴ In a manuscript, the poetic text is only “one of several discourses”, and everybody who participates in its production, scribes, rubricators and illuminators, Nichols argues, “are aware of their posterior status vis-à-vis the verbal narrative and of their interaction with one another’s discourses.”⁵ The literary text is “one among many components, primus inter pares, perhaps, but not pre-eminent. As such, it is susceptible to influences, to alteration from different components of the culture conveyed through and in the manuscript space.”⁶ Next to larger images, like the four miniatures in the manuscript of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, sketches and smaller drawings are common components of medieval manuscript culture.⁷ While the minor (and usually also the major) visual elements are commonly ignored in literary studies, it is important

 Only very recently have literary scholars started to incorporate images and their interpretative potential in their studies. Examples are Maidie Hilmo, Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Joyce Coleman, “Where Chaucer Got His Pulpit: Audience and Intervisuality in the Troilus and Criseyde Frontispiece,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 32 (2010): pp. 103 – 128. Several publications in German Studies ought to be mentioned: Michael Curschmann, Wort – Bild – Text: Studien zur Medialität des Literarischen in Hochmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, 2 vols. (BadenBaden: Verlag Valentin Koerner, 2007); Michael Stolz and Adrian Mettauer, eds., Buchkultur im Mittelalter: Schrift – Bild – Kommunikation (Berlin and New York: DeGruyter, 2005); Kathryn Starkey, “Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages,” in Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages, ed. by Kathryn Starkey and Horst Wenzel (New York et al.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), pp. 1– 13.  Nichols, “Why Material Philology?,” p. 12.  Nichols, “Philology and Its Discontents,” pp. 117– 118.  Nichols, “Why Material Philology?,” p. 14.  This may be because, as Kathryn Starkey explains, “medieval society [was] a highly visual one in which images, objects, and performances play a dominant, communicative, and representative role in both secular and religious areas of society.” Starkey, “Visual Culture and the German Middle Ages,” p. 2.

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for the study of the Regement as a manuscript fiction to grasp the performative function of what, at first, may seem unassuming sketches. I will argue that rather than being semantically redundant they demonstrate that medieval authors, scribes and illuminators were not only aware of the semantic possibilities granted by an interplay between different media, but that they made strategic use of such visual-verbal means for a variety of purposes, be they entertaining, political or aesthetic. This chapter will study several illuminations contained in the Regement’s manuscripts which enter such interplay. Next to several smaller images, I will argue, the two major ones were employed for illustrating two concepts of authorship, one associated with Geoffrey Chaucer and the other one with Thomas Hoccleve himself. Digby 185, a mid- to late 15th-century manuscript of the Regement, provides striking proof of how conventional visual tropes in the manuscript margin could be used to interact humorously with the main text, thus pointing to manuscript culture itself, including the many people involved in the production of a book. For example, at the end of folio 135v, the scribe inserted two catchwords: “Senec sayth”. Catchwords, commonly inserted at the end of a quire in the bottom margin, consist of the first two or three words of the subsequent quire. Technically, they aided the bookmaking process by making the alignment with the following new quire easier, as they signalled to the binder the quires’ correct order. In Digby 185, the words “Senec sayth” are stylised as the content of a scroll, which – comparable to a speech balloon in a cartoon – protrudes from the mouth of a grey-haired man whose head and shoulders are depicted in profile. It is safe to assume that the sketch is not the work of a professional illuminator, but was drawn by the scribe himself or perhaps by the rubricator: first, the quality of the drawing does not match a professional illuminator’s; second, the colours used in the sketch, red and blue, correspond exactly to the colours used for the paraph marks in the manuscript.⁸ Several catchwords in the manuscript are embellished in a similar fashion: for instance, on folio 119v, they are framed by an ornamentation that resembles an oak-leaf, on folio 127v, they form part of a round tart – and there are many more such examples. What makes the Senecacatchwords stand out, however, is that the drawing responds semantically to the text it frames: It represents a bust – supposedly Seneca’s –, and it shows him saying something as it provides him with a scroll which appears to be unravelling itself in the moment of speaking. The sketch thus does not simply represent

 The same person, it can be assumed, is responsible for the great number of embellished descenders in the last lines and marginal glosses in this manuscript, which are elongated floral swirls, often several centimetres long.

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Seneca speaking but it is also an illustration of the interdependence of written and oral modes of story-telling. The illustrated Seneca-catchword is a powerful example of the ways in which manuscripts may use the margin to depict written orality, or rather, depict orality in a written form. Alison R. Flett has emphasised the meaning of the scroll as a device to express voice and spoken words,⁹ while Michael Camille argues that speech in medieval manuscripts was commonly depicted as being written on a scroll, because a “roll, like speech itself, unfolds in one linear direction.”¹⁰ In a comparable example, Camille discusses a small figure of St. Augustine standing in the margin and pointing at a passage of text in which he is quoted. Moreover, the figure holds a scroll with the words “non ego”, as if to contradict the quotation and to question the text.¹¹ A similar example is discussed by Michael Curschmann: in an antiphonal, the prophet Isajah inhabits the initial C of “Clama in fortitudine”. Isajah is opening his mouth as if to shout or to sing and holds a scroll that includes the first word clama. The scroll is depicted as having no end: Isajah is holding the left end of the scroll, but there is no line delimiting the right end. The scroll and thus the oral performance are potentially infinite.¹² All these examples blend visuality, textuality and orality into one. Indeed, they show that the medieval manuscript is a space that proves to be ideal for the combination and interrelation of a number of media: as a medium in the literal sense (as a bearer of information) it can transmit texts and images; and as a medium in the material sense (an opportunity for performance), it can be read silently as well as to an audience. In the case of the Seneca-drawing in Digby 185, the scroll as a conventional pointer towards the interdependence of orality, visuality and textuality is not the only  “Through these scrolls the verbal penetrates the visual in a process which fuses word and image.” Alison R. Flett, “The Significance of Text Scrolls: Towards a Descriptive Terminolgy,” in Medieval Texts and Images: Studies of Manuscripts from the Middle Ages, ed. by Margaret M. Manion (Chur: Harwood Academic Publishers, 1992), p. 44. Stephen G. Nichols, likewise, discusses several similar examples involving scrolls as markers of speech: Stephen G. Nichols, “Voice and Writing in Augustine and in the Troubadour Lyric,” in Vox Intertexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages, ed. by Alger Nicolaus Doane and Carol Braun Pasternack (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 137– 162. For further examples, see Butterfield, “Mise-en-page in the Troilus Manuscripts: Chaucer and French Manuscript Culture,” pp. 69 – 70.  Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” p. 29. William J. Thomas Mitchell also mentions the scroll as the medieval equivalent to our speech-bubble: William J. Thomas Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995), p. 92.  Camille, Image on the Edge: the Margins of Medieval Art, pp. 21– 22.  Found in Curschmann, Wort – Bild – Text: Studien zur Medialität des Literarischen in Hochmittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, pp. 43 – 45.

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relevant semantic addition to the catchword: While the Seneca depicted in the margin of folio 135v utters – in his scroll – the words “Senec sayth”, the text on folio 136r states that “Senec sayth he hath not that thyng for noght / That bieth it by speech and by prayeere”.¹³ So while in the text, Seneca speaks words of wisdom on the high moral cost of things acquired by begging or borrowing, the pictorial Seneca just says that he says something, without conveying the message itself, as the content his scroll merely reads “Senec sayth” instead of “He hath not a thyng etc.” A first and rather superficial interpretation of this interplay of different media would be to see it as a witty pictorial rendering of the first two words of the text. But there is a second way of understanding this painted portrait of Seneca: he could be depicted in the moment of saying “Senec sayth” as a comment on the tradition of didactic literature and its habit of employing sayings or exempla in a way that renders them empty of meaning (see Chapter 3). Texts like the Regement of Princes quote authoritative sources, often using the formula “X sayth” so frequently that one can easily get the impression that the name of the source (Seneca, Aristotle, Augustine, the Bible, etc.) is much more important than the quoted content. This impression is underlined by those cases in which the quoted sentence or exemplum does not seem to fit the textual context at all and the interest in name-dropping seems to be much stronger than that in supplementing a text with exempla. In these cases, it is sufficient to state that Seneca says something, but what he says really does not matter too much. This is exactly the situation we find depicted in the bust of Seneca. One is tempted to read it as an especially pronounced case of a decorated catchword which at the same time comments on the practice of didactic literature to draw heavily on authorities. The interest of this practice, the Seneca bust seems to suggest, lies in dropping names instead of the contents of the quotes themselves.

Some Thoughts on the Concepts ‘Text’ and ‘Image’ This chapter that sets out to study the relation of text and image in the Regment of Princes is not based on two clearly separable entities, text vs. image. In his thorough discussion of the two concepts, W. J. T. Mitchell has shown that even though “”[w]ord and image” is the name of a commonplace distinction between types of representation”,¹⁴ “all arts are ‘composite’ arts (both text and

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4705 – 4706.  Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, p. 3.

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image); all media are mixed media, combining different codes, discursive conventions, channels, sensory and cognitive modes.”¹⁵ A closer look at the two concepts reveals why this is so: Text always incorporates visuality as soon as it is written down, and even oral text features visual elements, albeit more figuratively than literally.¹⁶ And similarly, Mitchell describes, painting can never exist without “contamination by language and cognate conventionally associated media: words, sounds, time, narrativity, […] ‘allegorical’ signification”.¹⁷ If the two concepts are inseparable, then what does this mean for a study like mine, which proposes to examine the relation of text and image? First and foremost, it means that a mere comparison of visual and textual renderings of a subject is not practicable, simply because the two cannot be clearly distinguished.¹⁸ But even if a comparison of text and image, or verbal and visual forms of representation, will not yield any significant results, it does make sense to examine how the two interact and how these forms of interaction create meaning. Mitchell proposes the following approach to the problematic differentiation: The point, then, is not to heal the split between words and images, but to see what interests and powers it serves. This view can only be had, of course, from a standpoint which begins with scepticism about the adequacy of any particular theory of the relation of words and images, but which also preserves an intuitive conviction that there is some difference that is fundamental.¹⁹

 Ibid., pp. 94– 95.  Cf. Ibid., pp. 94– 96. Mary C. Olson distinguishes, along the same lines, between spoken and written language, the latter of which includes images: “Both verbal and pictorial texts in illustrated manuscripts are inherently visual […].”: Mary C. Olson, Fair and Varied Forms: Visual Textuality in Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts (New York: Routledge, 2003), p. xx.  Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, p. 96. Mitchell offers a more detailed discussion of the concept of an “image” in chapter 1 “What is an Image?” of his earlier book: William J. Thomas Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology (Chicago, IL, and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 7– 47. Here, Mitchell distinguishes different members of a family of images, such as graphic, optical, perceptual, mental and verbal images and discusses their implications.  Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, p. 97.  Mitchell, Iconology: Image, Text, Ideology, p. 44. Where exactly this difference lies and manifests itself is hard to pinpoint. Mitchell attempts to summarise it: “The “differences” between images and language are not merely formal matters: they are, in practice, linked to things like the difference between the (speaking) self and the (seen) other; between telling and showing; between “hearsay” and “eyewitness” testimony; between words (heard, quoted, inscribed) and objects or actions (seen, depicted, described); between sensory channels, traditions of representation, and modes of experience.” Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, p. 5.

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Rather than seeing text and image as two separable entities that stand in a Paragone-like war with one another, they have to be understood as two related media, both visual and discursive, which relate to each other in different ways. These different modes of interrelation and interaction are the focus of this chapter. A step back in time shows that the relation of text and image was already a topic of debate in the Middle Ages, in fact, it has been discussed since Antiquity. Especially the relation of poetry and visual art has been the focus of interest. Horace and his postulation “ut pictura poesis” triggered numerous lively debates amongst scholars which show how profound the interest in these two forms of expression was.²⁰ The medieval discussion is often presented by modern scholars as having been dominated by the Bible’s commandment that “Thou shalt not make to thyself a graven thing, nor the likeness of any thing that is in heaven above or in the earth beneath nor of those things that are in the waters under the earth”²¹ as well as the beginning of the Gospel of St. John, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,”²² which prioritises words over images. In addition, Gregory the Great seems to have appropriated this into his dictum, which is now commonly quoted as the medieval way to conceive of text-image relation: “Nam quod legentibus scriptura, hoc idiotis praestat picture cernentibus, quia in ipso ignorantes vident, quod sequi debeant, in ipsa legunt, qui litteras nesciunt” (“The picture is for simple men what writing is for those who can read, because those who cannot read see and learn from the picture the model which they should follow”).²³ But as Michael Camille shows, this is a somewhat simplified account of a much more complex field of discussion. And it shows once more the teleological fallacy, according to which some modern scholars ascribe to the Middle Ages the simple, one-dimensional view onto the world that has become so much more diverse and multi-dimensional thanks to historical developments and achievements. Camille, discussing the diversity of the medieval debate on images and text, lists several examples of 12th-century images which would not have been intelligible to the illiterate without some form of explanation, such as cap-

 For a comprehensive picture of this debate, see Władysław Tatarkiewicz, Medieval Aesthetics, ed. by C. Barrett, vol. II (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1970). For a shorter overview, see Liliane Louvel, Poetics of the Iconotext (Surrey: Ashgate, 2011), pp. 31– 43.  Swift, The Vulgate Bible: Douay-Rheims Translation, Exodus 20,24 [highlights in the orignal].  Ibid., Gospel of St. John 1,1.  Both Latin original and English translation from Tatarkiewicz, Medieval Aesthetics, II, pp. 104– 105.

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tions denoting the people in the painting.²⁴ Similarly, Maidie Hilmo shows that in this discussion about the relation of text and image, Bede himself “did not consider it [a picture, E.K.] an inferior substitute for the written word, but on a par with it.” In a specific case, Bede shows that pictures can be used for “resolving an interpretative crux. He cites a painting to substantiate his argument that Paul received thirty-nine lashes rather than forty.” In this picture, “the torturer has a lash with four ends, but he holds one back, so it follows that since Paul was flogged thirteen times, he received thirty-nine lashes.”²⁵ Michael Camille adds a medievalist’s perspective on the relation of text and image in his study of 12th- and 13th-century illustrated manuscripts. He is convinced that “medieval pictures cannot be separated from what is a total experience of communication involving sight, sound, action and physical expression.”²⁶ Text and image should be studied in combination whenever they occur together. When it comes to the potential of such combinations, Camille does not speak about the semantic possibilities that arise from the different forms of interaction and that can be employed aesthetically. Rather, he maintains that the interaction of images and text eschews clear interpretation and thus raises questions: “the special power of combining words and pictures [perhaps] resides in this excess or ‘interference’ which distorts the all-too-easy signification of language, forcing us to ask questions about categories, labels and relations between res et verba.”²⁷ Whenever text and pictures meet, like in the manuscript discussed here, the interrelation creates what Camille calls excess or interference, which might be a potential to disrupt any straightforward interpretation or process of reading this particular combination. Instead, this excess makes readers ask questions about the interplay and this process of interpretation in general. In his chapter on “Metapictures”, Mitchell argues along the same lines when he observes that images often reflect their own mediality, that they are “capable of reflection on themselves, capable of providing a second-order discourse that tells us – or at least shows us – something about pictures.”²⁸ Building on Mitchell’s examination of the self-reflexivity of images, I  Camille mentions several paintings that “could never have functioned as a book for the illiterate in the self-contained form St Gregory outlined, since its whole referential system was to the written signs from which the latter were excluded”: Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” p. 34.  Both quotes: Hilmo, Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer, pp. 17– 18.  Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” p. 43.  Ibid.  Mitchell, Picture Theory: Essays on Verbal and Visual Representation, p. 38.

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study the self-reflexivity of manuscripts and their context inherent in the interplay of visual and verbal modes of representation.

The Manuscripts of the Regement as Canvas When it comes to images²⁹ in the corpus of manuscripts of the Regement of Princes, the situation is similar to that described by Catherine Eagleton in her essay on the manuscript tradition of Chaucer’s Treatise on the Astrolabe: most manuscripts are rather simple and lack images and any form of decoration altogether. Because the production of larger images or lavishly embellished borders must have been quite costly, more modest booksellers or buyers refrained from including them in the first place. This does not mean, however, that no images exist: two pictures are generally assumed to have been conceived by Hoccleve as accompanying the text: a presentation picture featuring the narrator / intra-textual author and the famous Chaucer portrait.³⁰ The two earliest manuscripts, Harley 4866 and Arundel 38, are now assumed to have been produced during Hoccleve’s lifetime, possibly even under his supervision, and both manuscripts did at one point contain both images.³¹ In both manuscripts, however, only  In the context of manuscript production, images of all sorts are often called illuminations. The term ‘miniature’ denotes a particular kind of illumination, one that comes closer to our common definition of a painting. It is “[a]n independent illustration, as opposed to a scene incorporated into another element of the decorative scheme such as a BORDER or INITIAL.” Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms (London: The Paul Getty Museum and The British Library Board, 1994), p. 86 [highlights in the original]. I will hardly ever differentiate between miniatures and other illuminations, and should I ever discuss borders or initials, they will hopefully be distinguished clearly, even if they are not differentiated in my terminology.  These are the names generally assigned to the images, and I will not deviate. A more thorough discussion of the images’ genre follows below. Most scholars focus on the Chaucer portrait and the fact that there is another painting slips their attention.  Several scholars argue in support of Hoccleve supervising the production of Harley 4866 and Arundel 38. See, for example, Seymour, “Manuscripts of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes”, as well as Blyth, “Introduction,” p. 16; Joyce Coleman, “The First Presentation Miniature in an English-Language Manuscript,” in The Social Life of Illumination: Manuscripts, Images, and Communities in the Late Middle Ages, ed. by Joyce Coleman, Mark Cruse, and Kathryn A. Smith (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), p. 428. Mooney argues that Royal 17 D. xviii is actually an autograph manuscript that contains a second recension of the Regement and was produced around the years 1412– 13, so only one or two years after the first version of the text. But Royal 17 D. xviii is a rather simple manuscript that does not contain any images. Mooney assumes that it might have been a presentation copy for John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford: Mooney, “A Holograph Copy of Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” pp. 263 – 296.

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one of the pictures survives. While Arundel 38 still contains the presentation picture (see Fig. 8) but lacks the Chaucer portrait, Harley 4866 still features the famous Chaucer portrait (see Fig. 6) but misses the presentation picture. Both missing pictures were cut out, and Harley 4866 and Arundel 38 are not the only two manuscripts that suffered this fate. The reason for such mutilation lies in the images’ outstanding nature: they are rather elaborate and, including frame ornamentation, cover a considerable part of the folio (this is especially the case for the presentation picture). Because of their expensive golden decoration, or simply because collectors craved to call one of the earliest portraits of Geoffrey Chaucer their own, they have been cut or ripped out of several witnesses. Like Arundel 38, Harley 4826 misses the Chaucer portrait, and in this case, we can even still see a little bit of the image: as it overlapped with the text’s space in several places, we still see a little bit of the green ground Chaucer is standing on, as well as the left rim of his black cloak. Nicholas Perkins raises the possibility that a sixth manuscript may have contained a Chaucer portrait: Queens’ 12 “is missing a whole quire, which may have contained a Chaucer picture.”³² So altogether, five, possibly six, manuscripts out of the corpus originally did contain the Chaucer portrait (Arundel 38*; Harley 4826*; Harley 4866; Royal 17 D. vi; and the Rosenbach manuscript).³³ The presentation picture featured in three of them: Arundel 38, Harley 4866* and Royal 17 D. vi. It was cut out of Harley 4866. There are several smaller images that have not been discussed but need our attention nevertheless. They are mostly singular occurrences in single manuscripts, and other than the presentation picture and the Chaucer portrait, they seem to have been included not as a commission by the author, but as decisions made by editors, illustrators or scribes. For this reason, they have been widely neglected by scholars. Additional 18632 on f. 99r starts the envoi with a rubric, written in red ink and a larger script: ‘Verba Compilatoris ad Librum’. Next to this rubric and above the initial O, there is a rectangular miniature of a “gowned figure” who, according to Seymour, “was probably intended to represent Hoccleve.”³⁴ The figure of a man as well as the book he is writing are badly rubbed and damaged, so his facial features cannot be identified. But the rest of the miniature is still clear and of very fine quality: the figure is sitting at a desk which, below his erect writ-

 Perkins, Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint, p. 158.  Asterisks denote the excised portraits.  Seymour, “Manuscripts of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” p. 275. A short description of the initial can be found in Michael C. Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve,” The Burlington Magazine 124:955 (1982): p. 623; unfortunately, no facsimile copy or printed copy exists.

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ing surface has a storage room filled with two books. On the desk, one can still see an open book, the rims of which have not been rubbed. Next to the book we see an inkstand. In the background arches indicate a building. This is clearly an author portrait which shows an author bent over his book, in the process of writing. The rubric that mentions the “compilator” explicitly further supports this assumption. A similar case might be the very first initial in Harley 4862. Here, a male gowned figure with a belt is standing in the initial and looking at the beginning of the text, “Musynge upon the restlees bysynesse / Which that this troubly world hath ay on honde, […].”³⁵ Again, the figure has been scraped away to a certain degree, but one can still make out that his hands are pointing at the text, which would be significant in the light of Laura Kendrick’s assumption that these small portraits of the texts’ authors, especially when found in the first inital of a text, create the presence of an authorial voice. In addition to these inhabited initials, and as an exception to the singular occurrences of these figures in initials and catchword-embellishments, both Arundel 38 and Harley 4866 contain the same drawn scene of a little male figure pulling a missing stanza from the margin into the main column of the text.³⁶ This image, which I will call the textual construction worker, deserves some more attention and will be discussed in detail below. Several manuscripts contain coats of arms of early owners. Arundel 38 alone features three coats of arms, which opened up the discussion of who the dedicatee of this work might have been.³⁷ The following first conclusions can be drawn when it comes to the situation of images in the Regement’s manuscripts: first, there are two major (because probably authorially intended) images. These images were included in only a very small number of manuscripts (three and five or possibly six out of the corpus respectively). In addition to these two major pictures, there are a number of

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 1– 2. Laura Kendrick in her chapter on author portraits in initials in European manuscripts states that theses small portraits, especially in the first initial of a text, simulated the presence of the particular author in the moment of writing: Laura Kendrick, Animating the Letter: The Figurative Embodiment of Writing from Late Antiquity to the Renaissance (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1999), e. g. p. 185. The Hoccleve-portrait in the first initial in 4866 may be part of this tradition and may have the same function.  In Arundel 38, this happens on folio 65, and in Harley 4866, this scene can be found on folio 62.  For whom exactly Arundel 38 was produced is a matter of debate. The number of coats of arms lead scholars to varying assumptions: Seymour assumes that it was written for Thomas FitzAlan: Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve,” p. 622. Kate Harris, however, argues that it was a copy to presented to John Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk: Kate Harris, “The Patron of British Library MS Arundel 38,” Notes and Queries 31:4 (1984): pp. 462– 463.

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smaller images or drawings, most of which are unique to single manuscripts. The only exceptions here are the so-called textual construction workers which are found in two manuscripts. If we regard the two major images as the Regement’s “pictorial programme”, then it is only a small group of manuscripts, Arundel 38, Royal 17 D. vi, and Harley 4866, which features the full programme – partly expanded by the construction workers.³⁸ Leaving out Royal 17 D. vi, whose images seem to be considered inferior and cheaper productions, Arundel 38 and Harley 4866 seem to be the only two manuscripts containing complete versions of this programme. It is no coincidence that these books are the earliest manuscripts and were intended to be presentation copies for or commissioned by patrons,³⁹ – and probably supervised by the author himself.⁴⁰

4.1 The Textual Construction Workers: Visualising the Manuscript Context The first of the Regement’s images to be discussed in more detail is the textual construction workers. They are an example of one of the most direct ways of performing the manuscript context: by depicting it in an illumination. In Chapter 2, I have argued that the narrator of the Regement’s prologue describes the hard labour and painful work as a scribe in order to foreshadow the instability of his texts in its later development and circulation. The passages de-

 As will be discussed below, the construction worker seems so have been the creation of a scribe or an impromptu addition of an illustrator, so it was no planned part of the pictorial programme. As it came to be copied into a second manuscript, however, one could argue that it can be seen as a later addition to the programme.  The recipient of Harley 4866 cannot be discerned, as the first and last leaves of the book, probably containing coats of arms, have been excised. Seymour speculates that it might have been a copy made for Edward, Duke of York or John, Duke of Bedford, but no support for this speculation can be offered: Seymour, “Manuscripts of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” p. 269. But as Harley 4866 and Arundel 38 are close to identical and boast the same elaborate embellishments, it seems safe to presume that they are both presentation copies.  The discussion around the Chaucer portrait and its time of production is often tightly linked with the discussion of the pilgrims’ portraits in the Ellesmere manuscript. The figure of Chaucer there looks remarkably close to the portrait in Harley 4866, without the frame but with a horse and a – slightly disproportionate – lower body attached to the torso. So great is the resemblance that Seymour, amongst other scholars, claims “that one can readily assume that [the Ellesmere manuscript and Harley 4866] were illuminated in one atelier in London or Westminster.” Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve,” p. 618. Nicholas Perkins claims that “The Harley and Ellesmere pictures were probably copied from the same model”: Perkins, Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes: Counsel and Constraint, p. 156.

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scribing the bodily requirements and the consequent ailments scribes are afflicted with are also read and examined by Andrew James Johnston, who – with recourse to Steven Justice – relates them to a particular pictorial phenomenon that can be found in a number of manuscripts: Hoccleve’s complaints accord well with certain doodles and marginal drawings in a medieval Book of Hours, showing a labourer pointing at the gaps in the text where words have been left out while simultaneously pulling at words with a rope in an effort to hoist them into the empty spaces, an image that draws attention to writing’s “humiliating social indecorum, which has given the textually expert a position more like that of a hod-carrier than that of a litteratus”.⁴¹

The drawing Justice and Johnston discuss can be found on folio 33v in a Book of Hours, assumed to have been produced around 1300, now part of the Walters Art Gallery collection (see Fig. 2). When he discusses this phenomenon of the labourers painted into the margins of medieval manuscripts, Steven Justice claims that “they are simply the scribe, imagining himself as another sort of menial labourer.”⁴² This takes into focus two issues at once: the professionalization and secularisation of medieval scribes on the one hand – “these workers can read Latin well enough to see where the text goes”⁴³ –, and the boredom and dullness that was part of the daily work-routine on the other. The need to focus and concentrate, according to Justice, is often expressed in “scribes’ comments and explicits, in their doodles and marginal drawings.”⁴⁴ What Justice’s discussion of the textual labourers does not take into account, however, is that these doodles and drawings are not always the scribes’ work: as they are too elaborately drawn and feature too many colours, we have to assume that they were inserted by illuminators. But once we expand ‘the scribe’ to ‘the makers of manuscripts’ in the wider sense, what lies at the basis of Justice’s quote still holds true: with the manuscript artisans’ professionalization, the illuminators’ profession as well as its boring routines necessarily became more visible. Michael Camille also studies these what he calls “tiny textual construction

 Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 266. Johnston is quoting Justice, “Inquisition, Speech, and Writing: A Case from Norwich,” pp. 295 – 296.  Justice, “Inquisition, Speech, and Writing: A Case from Norwich,” p. 295. Justice mentions these “doodles and marginal drawings” in his argument for a highly educated laity that was used to copy texts in a very tedious and boring work climate.  Ibid.  Ibid.

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workers”⁴⁵ that are later taken up by Justice and Johnston. In his book on medieval art in the margins of manuscripts, they are discussed as an example for the changing relation between marginal illuminations and text.⁴⁶ According to Camille, this relation changed as the production of books was distributed onto more people’s shoulders: Such antagonism or ‘difference’ between text and image is due to important changes in manuscript production. Whereas in the previous centuries [i. e. the late 12th century and earlier, E.K.] the text-writer and artist of a book were often one and the same, increasingly the two activities were practiced by different individuals and groups. The illuminator usually followed the scribe, a procedure that framed his labour as secondary to, but also gave him a chance of undermining, the always already written Word.⁴⁷

What these pictorial workmen moving bits of text on the manuscript page have in common with the textual passages in the Regement that describe a scribe’s work, is that they both depict the production of text as hard, straining work. But Camille’s reading of the pictures adds a second train of thought. As the production process of illuminated manuscripts became a patchwork endeavour distributed to several people, and as rubricators and illuminators encountered text that was already there, the status of the text must have changed. Camille talks about an “increasing self-consciousness of the marginal artist”⁴⁸ and a text that is “open to miscopying, misreading, corruption and appropriation” and thus “becomes an imperfect physical mark”.⁴⁹ In the case of Camille’s construction workers, as well as the two workmen in the Regement’s manuscripts, illuminators reacted to textual imperfections – forgotten or misplaced text – and in their reaction, appropriated these imperfections and turned them into opportunities for artful expression and comment on the laborious nature of their work. It might appear too speculative to presume that all illuminators read the whole text or had a thorough look at a page before starting their work, and in-

 This term is first used by Camille and is rather apt, because it stresses the brick-like character that the missing lines and stanzas display in this context. It also highlights the hard work that is part of producing text.  Camille, Image on the Edge: the Margins of Medieval Art, pp. 23 – 26.  Ibid., 22.  Ibid., 23.  Ibid., 24. An earlier discussion of this exact construction worker, found in David M. Robb’s The Art of the Illuminated Manuscript, describes this illumination as an example of “marginal drollery”: “Nothing could be more original than such a transformation of an obvious error on the scribe’s part into a humorously decorative adjunct of the page design”, David M. Robb, The Art of the Illuminated Manuscript (South Brunswick and New York: A. S. Barnes and Company, 1973), p. 237.

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deed we know that often the scribes or rubricators left short notes of instruction in the margin as to what illuminators were asked to draw, so that illuminators had no need to read the whole text but could just start working on the requested picture. But in some cases, it seems that artists read the text quite thoroughly and were inspired by its content. Camille mentions a drawing in an illuminated Missal (Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague, KB 78 D 40, f.124r): on a floral border, one of several monkeys shows its bottom to a monk who is busy writing a manuscript (see Fig. 3). This drawing was “presumably inspired by an unfortunate word division seven lines above. This line ends by breaking the word culpa in a crucial place, thus it reads Liber est a cul – the book is to the bum!”⁵⁰ The rather hypothetic connection between the monkey showing his bottom and the somewhat unfortunate word-division becomes much more probable once we take into account that there is a further connection between the horizontal border below the text on which the monkeys tease the monk and the text divided in such an unfortunate way seven lines above: Out of the border’s right corner grows a plant with a bird on top. The plant’s top and the bird are situated right next to the word cul and thus connect the monkey scene with this particular line visually.⁵¹ Next to the monkey pointing to its exposed behind, three others accompany him on the border, all of them holding sheets of paper, one apparently teasing the monk, another waving a flag with a cross, and the third one holding something that looks like a pen close to his mouth.⁵² Besides indicating that illuminators were quite conscious of the contents of the text, this shows how they on the one hand seem to have disliked, but on the other hand took advantage of their subsequent position in the chain of book production. How do Camille’s tiny textual construction workers and his teasing monkeys relate to the Regement of Princes? Johnston, in his discussion of the Regement’s textual passage about scribal labour and pains need not have gone so far as a Book of Hours to find pictorial representations of this idea. Two manuscripts of the Regement show a similar scene of a man who pulls an omitted stanza from the margin into the main column of text with the help of a rope: Harley 4866 on fol. 62r (see Fig. 4) and Arundel 38 on fol. 65r (see Fig. 5). Even if we assume that they are not part of the pictorial programme supervised, if not conceived, by Thomas Hoccleve himself, the workmen still survive in the two earliest manuscripts in an almost identical form. What is baffling about these two scenes is

 Camille, Image on the Edge: the Margins of Medieval Art, p. 26.  For an image of the whole folio, see ibid., p. 25.  This last monkey could be a visual pun of Augustine’s comparison of a writer’s pen to God’s tongue, which, if we accept this speculation, would make the illuminator quite an educated man.

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that they both are based on a scribal mistake, a forgotten stanza. Scholars assume that the two illustrations were made by two different artists.⁵³ It is very unlikely that two scribes independently forgot the same complete stanza and, subsequently, two artisans painted the same scene in order to make up for this scribal blunder instead of simply using one of the conventional insertion marks. The more probable scenario is that one scribe forgot to copy the stanza and the illuminator turned the insertion into the visualisation of hard labour that we see. When the next scribe stumbled across this phenomenon, he decided to include it into his own work, even if it was completely unnecessary. This means that at least one of the two manuscripts Arundel 38 and Harley 4866 included the workman pulling the lines on purpose. I say “at least”, because one could also assume that both manuscripts were copied from the same, now lost, exemplar, and this would make both surviving workmen purposeful insertions rather than artful emendations of mistakes. The two images do not differ much, in fact, they are almost identical. Both workers are dressed in rather simple clothes, which points to their status as labourers. Minor differences like the colour of the workmen’s shirts, the manner of fastening the rope can be neglected in this discussion. What matters here is that the images clearly are related, either by a common exemplar, or because one is the examplar for the other. Altogether, the two images of the Regement’s construction workers have not received any scholarly attention (to my knowledge), except for the workman of Arundel 38 being printed on the back of Ethan Knapp’s book The Bureaucratic Muse. This is probably because they are considered to be scribal additions rather than Hoccleve’s intention, which automatically excludes them from most scholars’ interest. The stanza that is being pulled by the workmen is about the virginity of God’s mother.⁵⁴ The content of the stanza itself with all probability did not inspire the illuminator to embellish the correction with this particular motif. So unlike the Seneca-portrait mentioned earlier, the images of the construction workers are not pictorial renderings of a few words that can be found on the same or the next folio. And even if we see the images as being connected to the Regement’s passages on scribal work and bodily pain, they also do not show a working scribe holding his back or rubbing his eyes (as they would, were they a depiction of these passages). We can see the construction workers as an interaction of text and image in a much more literal way, as the two men try to move the stanza to its correct place. In this case, the text, or more specifically the missing

 See Blyth, endnote to line 3578 in his edition: Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, p. 235.  Ibid., ll. 3578 – 3584.

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stanza, is regarded to be just an element on the manuscript page, a misplaced text box that needs to be dragged and dropped somewhere else. The same seems to hold true in the case of Camille’s textual construction worker: in Camille’s example just like in the Regement, the workmen’s interest is to simply move the text to its proper place with the help of a rope. The rope is not only important as connection between men and text, it also establishes the text’s trajectory: As Camille’s construction worker climbs up with one of his legs bent and the other still straight, he is in the middle of a step towards the main text.⁵⁵ While his right hand holds the end of the rope, the other arm is bent upwards and indicates the final position of the omitted text. The workman and the rope he is holding form an arch that foreshadows the movement that the text has to and – possibly – will make once the man starts pulling. The same holds true for the workmen in the Regement: the distance between them and the stanza in the margin is bridged by the rope which at the same time indicates the movement the text is supposed to make. The function of the men in both examples, Camille’s and the Regement’s, is to indicate for the reader where the missing text is supposed to be situated. Camille’s construction worker does so by pointing his hand at the correct spot. The Regement’s two workmen indicate the correct position by standing on it. Once the text has reached them, they seem to imply, the mistake will have been amended. But with all these similarities and parallels, there are some significant differences between Camille’s and the Regement’s construction workers. The most basic one is that the scenes in Arundel 38 and Harley 4866 are more tangible for the reader. This is due to several factors. One is that there is more of a background scenery on the Regement’s construction site: the workmen are standing on bits of ground that are shaped like ice floes and that are complete with visible layers of earth, short grass and tufts of longer grass. Another major difference between the scenes in Camille and the Regement is the rope. In Camille’s Book of Hours the rope is merely an almost schematic connecting line between the main text and the missing text, with no clear attachment to the omitted words. In the Regement’s two cases, by constrast, the missing lines are encircled

 At a very close look at the drawing of the two workmen (Fig. 2), one can see that next to the painted workman holding the rope, there is a rough and hardly visible sketch of a second workman. Apparently the painted man was supposed to stand on the knee and the face of a second man who points down towards the text. I assume that instead of the rope, the two men were supposed to form an artistic act connecting the omitted text with the correct position in the main text. Once it turned out that the downward-pointing worker could not reach the missing lines, he was replaced by a long rope. I am grateful to Sven Duncan Durie for pointing out that the sketched lines are not foliage, but actually a second person.

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with rope and secured neatly with a knot in one manuscript and a loop in the other. In addition, the two ropes as well as the knots and loops in Arundel 38 and Harley 4866 are painted in a very detailed way. But the most important difference is one that develops out of a formality: the position of the labourers as well as the trajectory of the text to be moved is different in the two examples. While the Book of Hours-workman pulls the text up vertically because the omitted lines were inserted below the main text, the Regement-workmen pull their text horizontally from the right-hand margin into the column of the main text. This may not seem very important at first. But it seems as if Camille’s workman in the Book of Hours, even though he is in the process of climbing up vertically, is not exactly under much strain. The text he is pulling apparently does not weigh much – even though, one could argue, pulling text vertically must be so much harder than pulling text horizontally. In comparison, the tightly stretched ropes in the manuscripts of the Regement as well as the grass hummocks created by the great weight of the pulling workmen, suggest that they need all their strength to move the text – notably without success: As both of the Regement’s construction workers, standing on a patch of grass, lean back until they are in an almost horizontal position, and as they brace their feet against the grass so much that it is deformed into little mounds, we can presume that the text they pull is heavy, and that pulling these lines into the correct position means hard work. And despite their effort, the text in both cases has not moved an inch, it is still firmly aligned with the marginal gloss just above the omitted lines. So just how much power and strength is needed until the text is set right, one cannot yet fathom. This futility emphasises the physical endeavour and corporeality inherent in these two images. A similar effect can be observed in the textual descriptions of a scribe’s hard work that are so detailed that the pain becomes almost palpable for the reader. Johnston reads these passages as “particularly unsuitable for providing social distinctiveness to his job.”⁵⁶ Indeed, the same can be said for the construction workers: producing books is presented as a hard and straining business that is nothing like the glamorous job done by author-narrators who are inspired by reading books (for example, Chaucer’s narrator-author in The Parlement of Foules) or are visited by a muse-like god or goddess or virtue (as in Boethius’ De Consolatione Philosophiae). Rather than a question of inspiration, it is a matter of bodily labour. This reminds readers that a book is the product of a collaborative effort that provides work for a number of people, paid work to be more

 Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 265.

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exact. As Johnston states: “This is a vision of literature that is neither courtly nor clerkly, but that of a skilled artisan, for whom the idea of being paid for his products is only natural.”⁵⁷ But not only do images and textual passages present this mode of textual production, they do present it in a rather negative light. After all, the descriptions of scribal work with its need for silence and concentration always resonate with the fear of corruption through scribal mistakes (as discussed in Chapter 2). And the images of the construction workers first of all emphasise that these workmen had to be hired because of an earlier scribal mistake, and second the images themselves hold out the possibility that all the work might not pay off in the end. Of course, different outcomes are possible. Like a perfect example of Lessing’s “pregnant moment”, the images offer us insight into a past and future to a much higher degree than Camille’s workman with his seemingly easy burden does. In the past, we know that both workmen in the Regement’s manuscripts must have prepared their text for its transport, by securely fastening the knot or pulling the rope through the loop. In the present, we see the workmen pull with all their strength to move the lines. We see them lean against their weight and deform the grassy patch on which they stand. But once we think about the future of the workmen’s scene, matters are open to different possibilities: we can imagine the text to move, bit by bit, into the column of the main text. Or, alternatively, we can see the workmen give up, shaking their heads and leaving the lines where they are. This latter possibility seems to be, if not decided, then at least more probable: even though the workmen both put all their strength into the task at hand, the text has not moved at all, and it seems that if they lean against the text’s weight with even more strength, their backs will touch the ground. In other words: they already give it their all, and yet not even the smallest success is visible. So the images might not only show us that producing literary texts is hard manual labour more than anything else, they also show that the effort of producing a correct text really is an effort in vain. This task, it seems, simply cannot be achieved. Even if the workmen – and with them the scribes, rubricators, illuminators and so on – try as hard as they can, they will not succeed. On a more general note then, this image could be the confession that no text will ever be perfect. To conclude: The two textual construction workers in the Regement’s manuscripts interact with the text on the manuscript folio in a most literal sense: they try to move misplaced stanzas and thus emend an earlier scribal mistake. As phenomena parallel to Camille’s workman in the Book of Hours as well as connected to the textual passages that describe scribal labour, they depict a mode of

 Ibid.

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text production that stresses physical strain and hardship rather than, for example, divine inspiration and guidance. At the same time, however, the mode of literary production they present is an inherently flawed one (hence the need for a textual construction worker in the first place) and may ultimately never succeed in the production of a correct text. This openness to variance is one of the very basic characteristics of the manuscript context in which medieval literature is situated. Another is the collaboration of different specialists (scribes, rubricators, illuminators, etc.), all of which add elements to the book that influence our perception of the text. Both these features are expressed visually in the two examples of the Regement’s textual construction workers.

4.2 Chaucer Pointing at the Regement: A Number of Pictorial Variants I will now turn to one of the two major images of the Regement of Princes. This chapter will study the Chaucer portrait and examine how the image differs from manuscript to manuscript. But it is not a mere description of the differences. In addition, I will show how the manuscript context influences the images’ semantic potential, and thus the reception and interpretation of the image-text relations. The Chaucer portrait lends itself to this kind of study, because it survives in three manuscripts. This means that it is not only the image itself that differs to varying degrees, but it is also its relation to the text, its potential meaning and thus our interpretation of it that is affected by these differences. The three Chaucer portraits in Harley 4866, Royal 17 D. vi, and the Rosenbach manuscript, differ only slightly in the way they portray Chaucer. But Chaucer’s relation to the text diverges greatly and thus affects our reading of the interplay of text and image. The Chaucer portrait as one of the two major images in the Regement has received quite some attention from literary scholars, first because it shows Chaucer, and second because it is so closely connected to the text, which mentions it explicitly. Most examinations of the Chaucer-portrait focus on the image in Harley 4866, and ignore the other two versions in Royal 17 D. vi and the Rosenbach manuscript. This is because Harley 4866 is now assumed to be the earliest of the three witnesses, and its portrait is considered the finest. The Rosenbach manuscript, in contrast, contains an 18th-century copy of the image in Harley 4866, and the full-body portrait of Chaucer in Royal 17 D. vi is considered to be of minor quality and the work of a less proficient illustrator.⁵⁸ This is why these

 Scholars assume that the portrait in the Rosenbach manuscript is an 18th-century addition

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two manuscripts and their portraits are hardly ever the focus of scholarly attention. A more detailed discussion of scholarly studies that deal with the relation of Chaucer portrait and text will follow below. It suffices to know that text and image relate to each other in what Ethan Knapp describes as a circular way: while the text mentions the portrait, the depicted Chaucer points to the line which in return mentions the picture, and so forth.⁵⁹ The portraits are all inserted in the margin next to a passage praising Chaucer. The Regement as a whole features three such passages, and the one with the portrait is the last of the three. The lines right next to the picture read “That to putte othir men in remembrance / Of his persone, I have heere his liknesse / Do make, to this ende, in soothfastnesse”.⁶⁰ Who the “his” refers to is made quite clear in the preceding stanzas, which praise “the firste fyndere of our fair langage / […] My worthy maistir Chaucer”.⁶¹ Furthermore, the passage describes the dead poet as a man who “[w]ith lovynge herte and hy devocioun, / In thyn [i. e. the blessed Virgin’s] honour he wroot ful many a lyne”.⁶² ‘Thyn’ addresses the Virgin Mary, thus stressing Chaucer’s piety. The visual portrait takes up the textual cues and accordingly shows an old man, holding a rosary and wearing a pencil case or a pen knife around his neck.⁶³ By incorporating these textual cues into the painting, the link between rather than a contemporary image: David R. Carlson, “Thomas Hoccleve and the Chaucer Portrait,” Huntington Library Quarterly 54 (1991): p. 285. Seymour gives a more detailed comparison of the portraits in Harley 4866 and Rosenbach: Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve,” note 8, p. 621. See also A. S. G. Edwards, “The Chaucer Portraits in the Harley and Rosenbach Manuscripts,” in English Manuscript Studies 1100 – 1700, ed. by Peter Beal and Jeremy Griffiths (London and Toronto: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 1993), pp. 268 – 272. A slightly dated but nevertheless complete overview of the Chaucer portraits is offered by Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: a Critical Biography (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), pp. 285 – 305.  Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England, p. 123. Knapp takes the concept of circularity from Tim William Machan whose interpretation of the image falls short as he suggests that “He [i. e. Thomas Hoccleve] incorporates the picture primarily to point to someting extratextual – the reality of the historical Chaucer […].”: Tim William Machan, “Textual Authority and the Works of Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Henryson,” Viator 23 (1992): p. 285.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4994– 4996.  Ibid., ll. 4978 – 4983.  Ibid., ll. 4986 – 4987.  It has been suggested that the pendant is an ampulla filled with “water and the blood of St. Thomas à Becket given to Canterbury pilgrims as the particular sign of their visit to the martyr’s shrine.” (R. Evan Davis, “The Pendant in the Chaucer Portraits,” The Chaucer Review 17:2 (1982): p. 193.) This suggestion is contested convincingly by Leger Brosnahan, so that scholars still assume that what Chaucer wears around his neck is some writing implement: Leger Brosnahan, “The Pendant in the Chaucer Portraits,” The Chaucer Review 26:4 (1992): pp. 424– 431.

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text and image is further consolidated.⁶⁴ The textual passage, right after praising Chaucer, moves on to a discussion of images in churches. Here, the Regement argues against the Lollard iconoclastic position and defends the use of images of Saints for the purpose of memoria. The strong connection between text and image is somewhat altered, however, once we take into account the manuscript situation. What emerges is a multifaceted picture that has not been the focus of scholarly attention: on the one hand, the close connection between image and text is disrupted in the manuscripts that have no picture at all. And on the other hand, even the three witnesses that feature a portrait all differ slightly, as the three portraits are situated in different spatial situations in relation to the text: in all three cases, Chaucer is depicted as an old pious man who points to the text and who wears a pencase around his neck. But the exact lines he points to are always different ones of the passage outlined above. This means that in each of the Chaucer portraits, the father of English poetry emphasises different lines and thus different aspects of the text. The earliest Chaucer-figure in Harley 4866 is situated right next to the stanza referring to it and it points at the lines “Of his persone, I have here his liknesse / Do make, to this ende, in soothfastnesse” (see Fig. 6).⁶⁵ This is the relation that is quoted most frequently, and it culminates and condenses the circularity noted by Ethan Knapp and other scholars, as here, the painted poet points at exactly those lines that feature the words “persone” and “liknesse” and thus bear the strongest reference to the painting. Several aspects are worth noting: first of all, the two lines do not only refer to the painting, but they also stress the artificial nature of this painting. The words “Do make” emphasise that it is a portrait that is in some way commissioned by the narrator. Second, a closer look at Chaucer’s pointing hand shows that it is situated right next to the end of these two lines, and thus in closest proximity to the two words “liknesse” and “soothfastnesse”. To be more precise, the index finger points into the narrow space between these two words and thus seems to set them into relation to one another. “Liknesse”, according to the MED, has several meanings: (1) Appearance and shape, (2) similarity and resemblance, (3) parable or exemplum,

 It is quite safe to presume the following order of production: first, the text was copied and then, if a painting was to be included, the manuscript was handed over to illuminators for the painting of the portraits. Jonathan J. G. Alexander’s monograph on medieval illuminators discusses, amongst other things, different ways how scribes or rubricators left instructions for later illuminators in the manuscripts: Jonathan J. G. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 53 – 64.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4995 – 4996.

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(4) the visible appearance of something.⁶⁶ “Soothfastnesse” means (1) “What accords with fact or reality, truth; certainty”, (2) righteousness or spiritual or moral truth, and (3) faithfulness.⁶⁷ So while “liknesse” refers to the image itself, to its appearance, its similarity and resemblance to Chaucer, and possibly its function as an exemplum, the second term “soothfastnesse” opens up the idea of truth, certainty and faithfulness. If we set these two ideas – the similarity of the image and its truthfulness – into relation, the following question arises: is the image of Chaucer, his likeness in the modern sense of the word, actually a truthful one that “accords with fact or reality” or not? By pointing at those two lines that refer to the image in the most explicit way, the connection between portrait and text is strongest in this manuscript. But at the same time, by pointing at these two specific terms, Chaucer’s pointing hand seems to trigger a discussion about how authentic this commissioned depiction of Chaucer is or can be. And as the second of the two lines tells us that the portrait is to be included “to this ende”, it refers back to the image’s purpose as an aid to “remembraunce”, which is mentioned two lines before (“that to putte othir men in remembraunce / Of his persone I have heere his liknesse”).⁶⁸ So several topics are the matter of debate in the interaction of Chaucer with the two lines at which he is pointing: the explicit reference to the image in the text emphasises its importance – after all, it has been commissioned and inserted by an artist. At the same time, however, its faithfulness to the empirical Chaucer’s appearance is made the matter of debate as the pointing hand highlights the two terms “liknesse” and “soothfastnesse”. This can be read as a warning: readers should not invest too much trust and expect the depicted Chaucer to be an exact copy of the empirical one. One could ask: if not for a faithful depiction, why is the portrait there then? The answer to this question can be found in the second line: the reference back to the matter of the image’s purpose as an aid to remembrance explains the portrait’s importance.

 http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?size=First+100&type=orths&q1=liknes se&rgxp=constrained [last accessed August 24, 2016]  http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/m/mec/med-idx?size=First+100&type=orths&q1=sothfastnes se&rgxp=constrained [last accessed August 24, 2016]  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4994– 4995. The syntax of these few lines is not clear: Depending on where we position a modern-day comma, the clause could either run “That to putte othir men in remembraunce of his persone, I have heere his liknesse etc.” or “That to putte othir men in remembraunce, of his persone I have here his liknesse etc.” Both sentences make sense and the basic differences as to who or what must be remembered and with which means must be discussed and studied elsewhere.

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The later copy of the Harley portrait in the Rosenbach manuscript is situated in the margin next to stanzas different from those in Harley 4866.⁶⁹ Instead of accompanying the stanza that contains the two lines with the explicit reference to the portrait, this Chaucer-figure can be found next to the two preceding stanzas. This does not mean, however, that there is no connection between text and image. On the contrary: the two stanzas praise “the first fyndere of our fair langage” ⁷⁰ and, just in case this is not explicit enough, immediately clarify “My worthy maistir Chaucer – him I meene”.⁷¹ The image thus is still well-connected to the text, and just like the Chaucer in Harley 4866, the one in the Rosenbach manuscript also points towards the text. But the circularity that characterises the relation of text and image in Harley 4866 turns out to be a superficial one in the Rosenbach manuscript once we look at it more closely. As we follow the hand’s direction, we find that it does not point at text, which in turn refers to the portrait, which in turn points at the text etc. Instead, it leads our gaze to nothing, because it points right into the wide gap between two stanzas, where we only find empty manuscript space. This gains further in significance as Chaucer’s pointing hand can be seen as part of the tradition of nota bene-hands that, as scribal devices, direct the readers’ attention to noteworthy lines, sentences, quotes etc.⁷² A pointing hand thus is a marker for importance and significance. In the case of the Rosenbach manuscript, however, the marker is reduced to a means bereft of meaning, because instead of an important line we are directed to note an empty space as worthy of our attention. Chaucer, who is repeatedly praised as the master of English poetry, a source of wisdom and counsel, does not point at the text, but at the gap in between, the empty space or, if seen from a performative point of view, the silence in between poetry. The stanza be-

 Unfortunately, no image of the Rosenbach-Chaucer portrait could be obtained for this publication, but can be seen in Carlson, “Thomas Hoccleve and the Chaucer Portrait,” p. 285. For my purposes here, a more detailed description will have to do: The margin in this manuscript is much narrower than in Harley 4866. In addition, the two lines that the Chaucer in Harley 4866 is pointing at, and which were situated in the upper half of the folio in Harley 4866, are in the last stanza on the page in the Rosenbach manuscript. And what is more, this stanza has two longer lines, which would have made the narrow margin even less suitable for a portrait. So due to constraints of space, the Chaucer portrait could not have been accommodated in the same spatial relation to the text than in Harley 4866. This explains the change in position, but ultimately it does not matter why the portrait is situated somewhere else. What matters is how this affects our reading of the text.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 4978.  Ibid., l. 4983.  More on nota bene-hands further below, see footnote 128 in this chapter.

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fore the gap which is highlighted in this peculiar way ends in the following three lines: Allas, my fadir fro the world is go, My worthy maistir Chaucer – him I meene; Be thow advocat for him, hevenes queene.⁷³

We could thus see Chaucer directing our attention not simply to a gap of silence in between stanzas of poetry. What is more, as his death is emphasised so explicitly in the stanza preceding the gap, this silence could be considered to be the eternal silence that was left behind when he died. But at least, this silence is surrounded by literary text. So just as Chaucer’s life and thus his fame is all about literature, the gap he left is, if not filled, then at least accompanied by text in his praise. The Chaucer in the Rosenbach manuscript, unlike the other two versions, does not direct our attention to some important aspect in the text, but rather at the gap that opened up as he left this world. This portrait might even be a commentary on the futility of any attempt to fill this gap: Hocclevean text, even if it is praising Chaucer, it seems to say, will never be able to fill the emptiness Chaucer’s death left behind. The Chaucer portrait in Royal 17 D. vi is a different case again: the first and most obvious deviation from the other two images is that Chaucer here is a full and free-standing figure that has no frame and background (see Fig. 7). These two peculiarities, Chaucer’s full body and especially the absence of a frame, take away some of the distancing effect and simulate the author’s presence to a much higher degree. Chaucer’s relation to the text is quite similar to that in the other manuscripts, however: his torso is turned towards the text, we see it from the side, and he points towards the column of text. The second, maybe less obtrusive difference pertains to the pointing gesture: Chaucer points with both hands. His left hand still holds a rosary, but its index finger is pointing nevertheless. And not only does the Chaucer in Royal 17 D. vi point at two different lines in the text, these lines also are different from those the other two Chaucerfigures relate to in Harley 4866 and the Rosenbach manuscript. While his left hand points upwards towards the stanza that refers to the painting, at the line reading “That they that han of him lost thought and mynde [/ By this peynture may ageyn him fynde]”,⁷⁴ the other hand holding the rosary points downwards to a later line that refers to the images in churches that “[Maken folk thynke on

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4982– 4984.  Ibid., ll. 4997– 4998. Additional lines in square brackets are quoted to complete sentences or clauses and convey the sense of the lines pointed at.

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God and on his seintes/] Whan the ymages they beholde and seen”.⁷⁵ The latter lines are part of a stanza that moves from lamenting Chaucer’s death and praising his glory to the topic of images in churches: The ymages that in the chirches been Maken folk thynke on God and on his seintes Whan the ymages they beholde and seen, Where ofte unsighte of hem causith restreyntes Of thoghtes goode. Whan a thyng depeynt is Or entaillid, if men take of it heede, Thoght of the liknesse it wole in hem breede.⁷⁶

On the question of how to read images, there was a lively discussion in the Middle Ages, especially when it comes to images in churches, which is the topic that immediately follows the Chaucer encomium and is thus brought to the readers’ attention immediately in connection to the portrait. The religious tract Dives and Pauper names three purposes and ways of applying images: first, they make people think about Christ, his life and passion, as well as about the saints and their lives; second, they elicit emotional reactions in people more than texts do, and third, they function as text for the unlearned.⁷⁷ The Regement’s stanza just quoted most strongly advocates the first of the three purposes, as it explicitly mentions that the images “Maken folk thynke on God and on his seintes”.⁷⁸ But the other two purposes mentioned in Dives and Pauper are at least alluded to: Good thoughts are said to be absent if people do not see any images of saints or God (lines 5002– 5003), so any form of emotional reaction is missing. And the last point, the preference of pictures over text for an unlearned audience (based on Gregory the Great) is alluded to in lines 5003 – 5005: if a thing is either painted or engraved, in other words, rendered pictorially, people will be able to reflect on God, the saints, the depicted in general. It has already been noted that this stanza relates to the discussion on the reception of images in the Middle Ages and that it at the same time puts Chaucer in connection to the saints and even Christ.⁷⁹ But what is even more significant in the context of textimage relation is that the image of Chaucer points at exactly these lines. In

 Ibid., ll. 5000 – 5001.  Ibid., ll. 4999 – 5005.  Dives and Pauper, ed. by Priscilla Heath Barnum, vol. 1, i (Oxford et al.: Oxford University Press, 1976), p. 82, ll. 36 – 44.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 5000.  See, for example, Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, pp. 289 – 290.

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other words: the image directs our attention to the quasi-manual on how to read and understand the poet’s portrait. So the image actively takes control of the readers’ perception and interpretation by telling them how they are to understand and employ it. What is important to keep in mind, however, is that the image needs text to convey this message. It is reliant on text to explain the different uses of pictures, but can use this text by pointing at and thus highlighting particular aspects of it. Three other manuscripts most probably did at one point feature an image of Chaucer. But the rest of the corpus of witnesses, thirty-nine manuscripts, do not contain a Chaucer-figure and never did. Surprisingly, most of these thirty-nine manuscripts do still contain the text that reads “That to putte othir men in remembrance / Of his persone, I have heere his liknesse / Do make, to this ende, in soothfastnesse”.⁸⁰ Only in two witnesses, Dugdale 45 and University Library Gg. vi. 17, scribes have omitted the five stanzas that feature the Chaucer-encomium and the reference to the portrait.⁸¹ So the explicit reference to the picture still exists, but the picture is missing, and this gap of the missing picture is made noticeable through the textual reference that makes readers expect an image. It is important to note that the reference to the image in the text is not necessary, because the content of the painting would have been quite obvious without the explicit reference, just by reading the encomium. Ethan Knapp asserts that Hoccleve must have planned a portrait to be in every manuscript of his text, which would reduce the problematic potential of the reference. I believe, however, that this assertion cannot be sustained in this form: the historical Thomas Hoccleve, the clerk and scribe of numerous literary manuscripts, must have known enough about book-production and -trade not to have these expectations. Instead, the fact that the text contains this explicit reference when the author must have been aware of how small the chances were for this painting to be in all of the manuscripts is quite significant. Through repeated references to the portrait, the text inherently holds the means of making sure that the gap is not to be missed by readers and scribes. Readers are distracted when they  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4994– 4996.  Linne Mooney discusses why this gap cannot have been the result of an exemplar from which the folio containing a portrait had been excised: both manuscripts have four stanzas per page, so one can assume that the exemplar would as well, which would mean that the Chaucer portrait in this exemplar would have covered three quarters of a page in order to make up for the space left by five stanzas on one folio. This is not very probable, considering that all other portraits, even the excised one in Arundel 38, are marginal and thus allow eight stanzas per folio. Mooney argues in favour of two scribes who decided to leave out the passage to conceal the missing portrait: Mooney, “A Holograph Copy of Thomas Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” p. 291.

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look for the painting, find a blank space, or a hole in the page where something has been cut out, or perhaps a note in the margin declaring that a portrait of Chaucer is supposed to be there but missing. This gap, and probably the obvious reference to the non-existing picture, triggered the numerous comments on and reactions to the missing image that we find in the thirty-nine manuscripts. These reactions come from scribes, rubricators, and readers. The reactions and commentaries take different shapes and have been added at different temporal stages of the manuscripts’ existence. One kind of reaction is marginal glosses that note the absence of the portrait, which can be found in eleven manuscripts.⁸² The glosses in these manuscripts all point to the fact that there was going to be a picture showing Chaucer: for example, the gloss in Ashmole 40 reads “the figure of Chaucer” and a later additional gloss reads “imagis”.⁸³ Ashmole 40 features glosses from different periods: next to some annotations made by the original scribe or the rubricator, there is also a set of later glosses, which were written by the same hand that added three pages of missing text. But Ashmole 40 is not the only manuscript containing later glosses: three witnesses also feature annotations that are much later, namely Douce 158, Harley 372 and Harley 4826.⁸⁴ These later glosses were probably added by owners and readers who noted the absence of the portrait. Contemporary glosses were often added by scribes and rubricators themselves, which shows that scribes either detected the gap in their exemplar and commented on it, or that they, while copying the Regement, knew exactly that their manuscript would not be a costly production and thus would not include the image. In one manuscript, a later annotation technically exceeds the concept  Ashmole 40, Bodley 221, Digby 185, Douce 158, McClean 182, McClean 185, Harley 372, Harley 4826, Laud Misc. 735, Beinecke 493, and Selden Supra 53. For these numbers, I rely on my own studies of the manuscripts, as well as on the transcriptions made by Charles Blyth in the process of editing the poem for TEAMS. I am grateful that Elon Lang, who is currently in possession of this material, granted me acces to these transcriptions as well as to numerous microfilms of manuscripts of the Regement.  Ashmole 40 is a special case: not only is it heavily glossed and these glosses notably come from two periods, but in addition we most probably know who added these later glosses: Seymour traced the history of the book and found that some missing pages were replaced by the antiquary William Browne, whose handwriting also provided the marginal glosses “from another unidentified manuscript”: Seymour, “Manuscripts of Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes,” p. 279. As to the date of these later additions: the first folio has an insertion in the column of the main text that reads “Liber W. Browne 1612”. So we can safely assume that the additions were made at the beginning of the 17th century.  In his hand-written transcription of the marginal glosses, Blyth calls these later examples “modern”, not specifying the exact time of insertion. Judging the spelling, however, they come from different centuries.

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of a marginal gloss: Harley 4826 at one point did contain the image, but it was cut out and is now missing. At the bottom of the page, a later hand inserted Off worthy Chawcer / here the pickture stood That much did wryght / and all to doo us good Summe ffuryous ffole / have cut the same in twayne His deed dos preue / he bare a barren brayne⁸⁵

This text is inserted into the column of the main text after the last stanza on the page. As the handwriting is quite different from that of the original scribe (it is later and much larger than the early 15th-century text), this addition to the poem is clearly marked as a later addition. But still, this is the only longer reaction to the gap, and the only one that comes in poetic form. The comment even follows the form of the Regement with its ten-syllable lines and written in end-rhyme couplets, a rhyme-scheme which corresponds to the last four lines of each seven-line stanza. The pseudo-medieval spelling of, for example, “pickture” and “ffole” shows that the author of this addition wanted it to look as close to the medieval text as possible.⁸⁶ But not all reactions to the missing portrait come in textual form. The Rosenbach manuscript itself can be considered to feature a reaction to the gap, maybe the most basic one, in the form of a later insertion of a Chaucer portrait. Scholars consider it to be a 17th- or 18th-century copy of the image in Harley 4866. A. S. G. Edwards argues that it was the 18th-century owner “Mr. John Murray of London”,⁸⁷ who owned the Rosenbach manuscript before the recorded owner Sir Thomas Phillipps who bought the manuscript in 1825. Murray was lucky to count among his friends the owner of Harley 4866, which would have made it easy for him to get the portrait copied from the Harley manuscript.⁸⁸ I call this the ‘most basic’ form of a reaction, because one might argue that the easiest reaction to an announced but missing portrait is adding a portrait. Things are not as simple, however, but basically every of the thirty-nine manuscripts that feature a gap instead of a portrait inherently has the infinite potential to become a manuscript-cum-portrait.  This transcription is Charles Blyth’s handwritten transcription, spelling mistakes are possible. Pearsall also quotes this insertion. He ascribes it to the 16th century: Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: a Critical Biography, p. 289, while the online manuscript catalogue of the British Library says that it is a 15th-century addition: http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedma nuscripts/record.asp?MSID=8714&CollID=8&NStart=4826 [last accessed August 24, 2016].  The stanzas in the Regement follow the rhyme scheme ababbcc, sometimes ababbaa.  Edwards, “The Chaucer Portraits in the Harley and Rosenbach Manuscripts,” p. 268.  For a fuller account of Edward’s argument, see ibid.

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A rather simple yet creative way of reacting to the missing picture can be found in Digby 185. On folio 139r, the scribe inserted a gloss into the margin reading “Chaucers ymago” with the letter y descending into a long floral swirl painted in ink.⁸⁹ The swirl reaches over several lines, until the last line of the stanza, which is also the last line on the page. The two words are inserted in the same size as the main text and as the other marginal glosses. They are also adorned with a blue paraph mark, just like the other glosses in the margin. So we can safely assume that this is not so much a note to an illuminator,⁹⁰ but rather a gloss directed at readers. The extended descender might be an allusion to the visual quality of what this gloss replaces, but textually, the gloss mocks the readers, telling them what they do not see, because it is being withheld from their sight. There is one more reaction, but it is not one that is traceable in the manuscript corpus. It is a potential reaction only, and it bears truly infinite possibilities. It involves every single reader who may want to fill the gap using his or her imagination. As the text announces a second, visual, medium to supplement it, and then is not true to its word, it still offers readers the means to do so. In addition to the information that there will be an image, we also are told quite explicitly what the image will show. First of all, we are told that it is a portrait of Chaucer we have the chance to envision. Then we read that Chaucer is dead, that he was pious and that he was devoted to the Virgin Mary for whom “he wroot ful many a lyne.”⁹¹ As mentioned earlier, the portrait actually takes up many of these textual clues and visualises them through the white hair (old age is of course not an equivalent to being dead, but at least a conventional association), the penner around Chaucer’s neck and the rosary he is holding. So the text provides readers with pieces of information that can be used like cornerstones for their imagined portrait of Chaucer. These portraits might all be completely different. But what matters here is that the text on the one hand creates a rupture and a gap and makes sure nobody misses this gap, but at the same

 Indeed, the scribe of this manuscript seems to have enjoyed adding the same kind of floral swirl to descenders in the last lines, as this embellishment can be found quite frequently in Digby 185 (see, for example, Fig. 1 in the appendix, where a swirl can be seen in the background of the catchword embellishment). The gloss “Chaucers ymago” is one of three instances where a marginal gloss is embellished.  This kind of collaboration of course was common practice: scribes left space for coloured and filled initials, including the required letter in the space for later illuminators. But these notes were small and unobtrusive and certainly not embellished with a floral swirl of a certain length  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 4987.

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time offers the means to fill it through a different kind of visualisation that presupposes a more active and imaginative reader.⁹² Examples like the Chaucer portrait emphasise how much influence the book trade exerted on the production of manuscripts, and ultimately on the manuscripts themselves: books copied for rich patrons were embellished and richly decorated, while on spec productions for less wealthy buyers were rather simple and avoided costly decoration. As a scribe of literary manuscripts, Hoccleve must have been familiar enough with the rules and costs of book production to know that not all later manuscripts of his Regement would include the portrait. Still, he included the explicit reference to the image into his text, which made the gap in the margin even more pronounced. This gap – possibly foreseen and planned – reminds the reader that each book is the product of a collective effort in which scribes, rubricators, illuminators, bookbinders and -sellers and ultimately buyers determine as much of the end-product as the author did. Through the explicit reference to the (in most cases absent) portrait, the instability of manuscript culture and the dependency on a number of factors such as the choice of exemplars, the financial frame for a particular manuscript, the care of a scribe and the availability of an illuminator, amongst others, are already inscribed into the text. So when we speak about the semantic possibilities that are inherent in manuscript illuminations and their relation to text, we have to keep in mind that these semantic possibilities are subject to the variance that is always a part of manuscript production. And it is not only the absence vs. presence of an image that makes a difference here. Minor and hardly perceptible variations can have major consequences, too. The three versions of the Chaucer portrait in Harley 4866, the Rosenbach manuscript as well as Royal 17 D. vi bear witness to this fact. Once the manuscript situation is taken into account, it becomes obvious that the portraits hardly differ in their depiction of Chaucer, but that their spatial relations to the accompanying text have important consequences for our interpretation of this interplay. The three case studies above have shown

 As a side remark: this active role is not confined to readers whose manuscripts do not contain the portrait. Readers of those few manuscripts that include the image, who, in other words, are offered a visualisation in the first place, may still compare the painted image with what they would have expected after reading the text, much like modern readers who see a film adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and are disappointed because Mr. Darcy looks nothing like the Mr. Darcy they had imagined while and after reading the novel. It is interesting how much the opposite holds true for modern readers of Chaucer, most of whom probably have a picture of a white-haired man holding a rosary and pointing at some text in mind while reading the Canterbury Tales.

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that the differences between the three portrait versions are neither obtrusive nor basic. But they change which parts of the text we note – or in the case of the Rosenbach manuscript: which gap in the text we note – and how we interpret the Chaucer encomium. In addition, those manuscripts that do not feature a portrait also show different ways of dealing with this absence. These reactions come not only from different people (scribes, owners, readers, rubricators), but also from different stages in time. And they show how open the process of writing and finishing the text is: all kinds of people are able to take part in the text’s history and development through commenting, adding text and images. At the same time, the manuscript situation also shows how potentially infinite this process is. Reactions range from the early 15th century when they coincide with the copying process up until the late 18th century – and they might still go on, if today’s manuscript reading room-staff gave us the chance to do it. The text with its explicit reference to the missing portrait thus opens up the space to react. This study of the Chaucer portrait and its relation to the text shows that each manuscript with its particular text-image relation or its marked lack of an image constitutes a case in its own right and may has to be studied individually. It thus stands in a clear tradition of the postulations of the Material Philoloy.

4.3 A Portrait of the Author as … So far, I have shown how the Chaucer portraits in the three surviving versions relate to the text immediately corresponding to them. I have discussed the differences not only in the images, but also in the image-text-relations. Examining how the Chaucer portrait relates to the Regement in general, not only the passages in its immediate vicinity, it becomes clear that this relation is employed for literary-political purposes. The following sub-chapter will study not only how the Chaucer portrait presents the so-called father of English poetry as a clerkly author. In addition, it sets Chaucer’s depiction into contrast to the depiction of Thomas Hoccleve himself, who in his portraits personifies a completely different author concept.

4.3.1 … Clerkly Chaucer The Chaucer portrait, especially in its earliest version in Harley 4866, has received considerable scholarly attention and has been subjected to a number of interpretations. Not all scholarly interest is directed towards the relationship

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of image and accompanying text, however. Especially earlier studies are much more concerned with the authenticity and verisimilitude of the portrait, as well as the portrait’s authorizing purpose for Hoccleve. Further, if the textimage relationship is considered at all, it is done without giving the manuscript context the attention it deserves. Derek Pearsall sees the portrait in Harley 4866 as an “actual likeness of Chaucer, not an idealized portrait, and it must be emphasized what an early date this is for a portrait to be and to be claimed as an accurate likeness.”⁹³ Even though Pearsall does note the difference between the portrait actually showing Chaucer and the text claiming that the image does, he then goes on to say “Hoccleve would have been a fool to make so specific a claim unless it were demonstrably true.”⁹⁴ Frederick Furnivall sees the portrait in connection to the textual praise of Chaucer as proof that “Hoccleve was either with Chaucer when he died, or saw him on his “bed mortel” just before he died”.⁹⁵ He thereby assumed a very close relationship or almost friendship between the two writers. Jerome A. Mitchell assumes the opposite, arguing that a friendship between Chaucer and Hoccleve is not certain at all. First of all, Mitchell argues, the textual praise of Chaucer does not say anything certain about the supposed relationship. And second, even the allusion to Hoccleve’s remembering Chaucer’s appearance should not be interpreted as proof of their friendship. Rather, while it is probable that Hoccleve indeed saw Chaucer, they “moved in widely different social spheres”, which makes it unlikely that they would have been the kind of acquaintances that Furnivall and other scholars supposed them to have been.⁹⁶ David R. Carlson argues that “it was to Hoccleve’s advantage to see to it that any portrait he put about with is Regiment of Princes really looked like Chaucer”.⁹⁷ In a somewhat circular fashion, he concludes that “in light of the context in which Hoccleve’s Chaucer portrait has been transmitted, this effort to use Chaucer’s reputation serves to confirm the truth of the portrait type”.⁹⁸ While tracing the origins of authors’ portraits back to royal tomb effigies in the late 1350s, Jeanne E. Krochalis is amongst the first scholars to see the portrait not merely as proof for a certain historical reality, but rather as a fictional entity standing in a relation to a fictional text. Krochalis stresses that Chaucer’s image did not need to be true to life, be-

 Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: a Critical Biography, p. 287.  Ibid.  Furnivall, “Forewords,” p. xxxi.  Jerome A. Mitchell, “Hoccleve’s Supposed Friendship with Chaucer,” English Language Notes 4 (1966): p. 12.  Carlson, “Thomas Hoccleve and the Chaucer Portrait,” p. 283.  Ibid., p. 286.

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cause in these depictions, “individualized faces were unnecessary. Iconographic indicators sufficed”.⁹⁹ Hence, Krochalis marks a step in the scholarly debate, a step away from the question of verisimilitude towards studies that perceive the portrait as an aesthetic device that might pursue a certain purpose in relation to the text. These later studies focus on different aspects of the text and its relation to the image. They are thus much more various in their approaches and results. According to Krochalis, the passage preceding the image, which deals with the importance of a good counsellor as well as the following praise of Chaucer, offers Prince Henry one source of appropriate counsel. At the same time, the stanza following the one with the portrait invokes the Virgin Mary and thus thematically moves from Chaucer’s image to saints’ images in churches. It thus, so Krochalis, “gives a high and holy seriousness to Chaucer, to poetry, and to poets at the royal court”.¹⁰⁰ Ruth Nissé’s thoughts on the Chaucer portrait also emphasise the “quasi-religious” character of the painting, as it is embedded in a discussion of religious orthodoxy and sacred images.¹⁰¹ Alan T. Gaylord argues along similar lines when he says that “Hoccleve intended his picture as an “effigy”, not a portrait. An effigy was a stand-in for the original person, an aid to remembering and contemplating what he was notable for.”¹⁰² Putting into focus what Chaucer was notable for explains the presence of the pen-knife or penner hanging around his neck. Just like Gaylord, Peter Brown considers the discussion of religious images that follows the passage praising Chaucer to be the key to understanding the relation of portrait and text. Brown argues that “the very act of appropriating religious ideology to serve secular ends itself undermines the orthodox position that Hoccleve ostensibly adopts.”¹⁰³ Shannon Gayk discusses the portrait and the accompanying text from several perspectives. She highlights the orthodoxy-heresy issue as well as the literary tradition evoked by the image and the personal relation the narrator postulates in the text. But interestingly, a third perspective adopted by Gayk – albeit without going into  Jeanne E. Krochalis, “Hoccleve’s Chaucer Portrait,” The Chaucer Review 21:2 (1986): p. 237.  Ibid., p. 241.  Ruth Nissé, “‘Oure Fadres Olde and Modres’: Gender, Heresy, and Hoccleve’s Literary Politics,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1999): p. 287.  Alan T. Gaylord, “Portrait of a Poet,” in The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation, ed. by Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1995), p. 126. A similar stance is taken by James H. McGregor: James H. McGregor, “The Iconography of Chaucer in Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principum and in the Troilus Frontispiece,” Chaucer Review: A Journal of Medieval Studies and Literary Criticism 11:4 (1977): pp. 338 – 350.  Brown, “Images,” p. 315. “Secular ends” describe Chaucer as the secular aim of the orthodox mechanisms of worshipping images.

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too much detail – is that of the exemplum tradition: “Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes (1412) shows the poet to be very interested in the mirroring structure of textual exempla, but it is only at the end of the prince’s advice book and only after supplying a series of textual mirrors that Hoccleve addresses visual exempla.”¹⁰⁴ To see the image of Chaucer as an exemplum rather than a depiction falls into line with the discussions offered by Gaylord and Brown, among others, but it links the portrait and the accompanying text closer to the generic frame they are situated in. Andrew James Johnston’s discussion of the Chaucer portrait sees a connection between the painting and the eulogistic passages in the Regement. Johnston understands the portrait as a historicising device employed by Hoccleve in order to legitimise himself as a potential counsellor to Prince Henry: And thus, while he establishes Chaucer as an authority in the typically medieval sense, Hoccleve also turns him into a specific historical figure, a part of the irrecoverable history that makes Hoccleve’s activity necessary to princes and yet protects the author from the princes’ all-enveloping grasp, guaranteeing the survival of a specifically literary authority both beneath and beyond the political and social authority Hoccleve seems to be sacrificing it to.¹⁰⁵

Johnston’s comparison of the Chaucer portraits in Harley 4866 to the Troilusfrontispiece leads him to suggest that Hoccleve presents us with a Chaucer that is completely different from the courtly recitation of Troilus and Criseyde to an aristocratic audience: By adorning Chaucer with a pen case and making him draw the reader’s attention to the actual writing, Hoccleve – a clerk in nearly all the senses of the term – is drawing his idol closer to his own social position, implying a unity between the technical activity of producing text on paper and the poetic activity of producing literature.¹⁰⁶

What is striking about Johnston’s idea is not only that the portrayed Chaucer is depicted in a way that moves him closer to Hoccleve in terms of social hierarchy – it is the idea that the depiction of Chaucer could be a modifying one in the first place, that the father of the English tongue could purposefully be portrayed as

 Shannon Gayk, Image, Text and Religious Reform in Fifteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 49.  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 287.  Ibid., p. 260.

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anything but his true historical self, but rather in a way that moves him anywhere, be it socially, historically, or in terms of concepts of authorship. Ethan Knapp also considers the relation between portrait and text. Following Machan,¹⁰⁷ he points out that picture and text reference each other in a circular way: while the text mentions the portrait, the depicted Chaucer points to the line which in return points to the picture, and so forth.¹⁰⁸ This circularity, according to Knapp, creates a “circuit of authority, one in which Chaucer’s authority supports that of the text but is also itself created by the text”.¹⁰⁹ Significantly, Knapp’s interpretation stresses that as the “text […] refers explicitly to an accompanying image, so Hoccleve most likely meant a portrait to be included in all copies of the poem”.¹¹⁰ While I would support Knapp’s opinion that the text’s explicit reference to the painting must be significant, I do not believe that this means that Hoccleve wanted a portrait in each and every manuscript. As my discussion of the different versions of Chaucer’s portrait above has shown, the significance of the textual reference to the missing portrait lies in highlighting the gap that opens up in the majority of manuscripts, a gap that can then be reacted to by scribes, readers, owners, illuminators etc. Both Knapp and Johnston argue that the circularity inherent in the text-portrait relation leads to an exertion of authority (Knapp) and, more specifically, clerkly authority (Johnston) over Hoccleve’s text. My discussion of the Chaucer portrait will take its cue from here. I will show that not only does Hoccleve present his master as a clerkly author (with the help of the image, the text, and their interaction), but that at the same time Hoccleve positions himself in opposition to this label. Knapp’s circularity is a good starting point when it comes to the Chaucer portrait and the text that accompanies it, because this circularity marks the very special feature inherent in this relation: hardly ever does a text reference a corresponding painting so explicitly and hardly ever does a painting point to the text in such a literal way. It is especially the influence of the painting over the text that strikes us as extraordinary. Unlike in my earlier discussion of the different versions of the portrait, my focus will now be on the wider textual context that stands in relation to the painted Chaucer, as well as on the portrait’s iconography, which hardly differs in the three versions: all three images depict an old man pointing at text. Here, I believe, we see one of the basic characteristics that the image ascribes to the dead poet Chaucer: he interferes, and this interference would have been notice-

 Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse: Thomas Hoccleve and the Literature of Late Medieval England, p. 123, footnote 125.  Ibid., p. 123.  Ibid.  Ibid., p. 119.

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able at first sight. As the portrait is one of very few images in the Regement, we can assume that readers who see the page for the first time will notice the image right away and will first pay attention to the painting rather than the text. They would probably know who is depicted, as the two stanzas leading up to the stanza that comes with the painting already praise Chaucer and name him as the paragon of literary activity. We also have to keep in mind that this passage is the third and last passage that praises Chaucer and thus gives the impression of a strong personal relation between the eminent poet Chaucer and his student and successor Hoccleve.¹¹¹ But Chaucer’s exertion of authority over the text is not only established through his authoritative gesture in the picture, but also repeatedly in the Regement’s text. One further step back is necessary to get a full view of the wider textual frame this image is set in. Special attention will be paid to the relation between narrator and prince that is established in the text. We find the Chaucer portrait and the accompanying stanzas in the chapter that deals with accepting counsel in all kinds of situations (“De consilio habendo in omnibus factis”). It addresses Prince Henry and tells him that being counselled by others is a virtue necessary in a king. The reason for this necessity is given right in the very first stanza of the chapter: Now purpose I to trete how to a kyng It needful is to do by conseil ay, Withouten which good is he do nothyng; For a kyng is but a man soul, par fay, And be his wit nevere so good, he may, Erre and mistake him othirwhyle among, Whereas good conseil may exclude a wrong.¹¹²

The prince’s somewhat subordinate position is made very clear in this first stanza of the chapter: he always needs counsel (l. 4860), without which he can do no good (l. 4861). This is because he is only one single man (l. 4862). And if, in addition, he is not sharp-witted either, he might make mistakes at times (l. 4863 – 4864). The picture of a ruler drawn here is that of a helpless, possibly even incompetent decision-maker. Judith Ferster calls this the “paradox of the

 Andrew James Johnston argues that “we must assume that Chaucer and Hoccleve never met socially (as opposed to physically)”: Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 278. Ultimately, however, the degree of mutual acquaintance or friendship is really not decisive for my argument.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4859 – 4865 [highlights are my own].

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Fürstenspiegel”:¹¹³ Kings and princes, the most powerful people, are described as weak and dependent on the counsel of those whose only power lies in their ability to govern and advise. In opposition to the prince, the narrator posits an array of possible counsellors: old and young, poor and rich, as long as they are wise and come with honest intentions.¹¹⁴ When it comes to counsel, this passage seems to suggest, there is a clear dichotomy, almost a relation of dependence, between the prince in need of help, and those around him that are suitable to counsel him. The narrator thus positions himself as a possible and valuable counsellor by assuring the prince that good advice can also come from poor people, i. e. himself. After seventeen stanzas focussing on this topic, the passage praising Chaucer, which follows then, seems to be quite unrelated to the preceding stanzas at first glance: the only more or less explicit connection established is that Chaucer “Hath seid, in cas semblable, and othir mo, / So hyly wel that it is my dotage / For to expresse or touche any of tho.”¹¹⁵ These words start off the encomium, in which the accompanying portrait is referenced in such an explicit way. At a closer look and taking into account the hierarchical relation between narrator and prince, however, the passage is more related to the preceding lines than expected. This will be discussed in a moment. At the end of the encomium, the lament of Chaucer’s death leads over to a discussion of the use of images in churches. Following this, in the last stanzas of this chapter on accepting counsel, the narrator turns to poverty and postulates that it should not be a category that excludes potential advisors from political counsel. Then, the narrator introduces the following and last chapter of his Regement, but not without dropping anoth-

 Ferster, Fictions of Advice: The Literature and Politics of Counsel in Late Medieval England, p. 154.  The issue of young counsellors has been discussed at some length in Chapter 3.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 4978 – 4980. Scholars have assumed that with “in cas semblable”, the narrator refers to the “Tale of Melibee” or the “Monk’s Tale”, which are often read as pieces of counsel literature. This assumption can be supported by the fact that the portrait of Chaucer in the Ellesmere manuscript accompanies the “Tale of Melibee” rather than the first tale told by Chaucer, that of “Sir Thopas”. The portraits, which probably share a common exemplar, are thus linked textually as well as visually. Alan T. Gaylord further supports this strong relation of the Regement with the “Tale of Melibee” by taking into account not only the portraits and the content of the two texts, but also the layout on the manuscript pages and the marginal glosses prevalent in both texts: Gaylord, “Portrait of a Poet.” Another contender for the “cas semblable” has been the “Monk’s Tale”, which Larry Scanlon identifies as “a De Casibus collection, a genre related to the Fürstenspiegel.” Scanlon, “The King’s Two Voices: Narrative and Power in Hoccleve’s Regement of Princes,” p. 227. Andrew James Johnston summarises the argumentation for these parallels and convincingly argues against them: see Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, pp. 283 – 284.

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er hint to his financial dilemma: “More othir thyng wolde I fayn speke and touche / Heere in this book, but swich is my dulnesse, / For that al voide and empty is my pouche, / That al my lust is qweynt with hevynesse, / And hevy spirit commandith stilnesse.”¹¹⁶ So altogether the chapter serves several purposes: it legitimises the narrator’s Regement as a piece of written counsel; it strengthens the narrator’s position as a potential counsellor despite his poverty; and it yet again reminds the dedicatee of the work that some kind of financial reward may be called and is certainly hoped for. And ultimately, this encomium of Chaucer creates a close connection between him and Hoccleve. I will now come back to the transition from the chapter on accepting counsel to the encomium, which is not quite as sudden as often assumed. As explained above, the chapter on how to accept counsel establishes a clear dichotomy between the prince who may be completely helpless without counsel and those who are there to meet his needs. In a similar way, I argue, the encomium – especially in connection to the portrait – creates a dichotomy and almost a dependency between Chaucer and the narrator which is similar to that between the prince and his counsellors. In other words, Chaucer turns out to be more than just the dead role model admired by the narrator Hoccleve and legitimising his writing the Regement. Andrew James Johnston states that “[t]he generation gap between Hoccleve and Henry is paralleled by that between Chaucer and Hoccleve”.¹¹⁷ In addition to this, throughout the Regement the dead poet Chaucer is presented as having guided, taught and counselled the narrator, especially in his literary productions. This guiding function is expressed in the narrator calling Chaucer his “maistir”¹¹⁸ and “fadir”¹¹⁹ repeatedly; in addition, Chaucer is explicitly described as a source of counsel for the narrator in the first of three references to him: But, weleaway, so is myn herte wo That the honour of Englissh tonge is deed, Of which I wont was han conseil and reed.¹²⁰

Both Andrew James Johnston and D. C. Greetham see Hoccleve’s description of his relation to Chaucer as an example for the common medieval “discipleship”

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 5013 – 5017.  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 280.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 4983.  Ibid., l. 4982.  Ibid., ll. 1958– 1960.

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topos.¹²¹ But as both scholars point out, even though it is a topos that is employed here, this should not keep us from ascribing particular significance to the conventional, as “the topos can in fact be used as an ironic stick with which to beat one’s predecessors”.¹²² To establish Chaucer not simply as a teacher of some sorts and a master, but also as an advice-giver and a counsellor might be part of the topos, but in a Fürstenspiegel and especially in a chapter on accepting counsel, this topos gains in significance: it establishes a relationship that mirrors the relationship the prince enters into once he accepts the Regement and the counsel it offers.¹²³ The Regement with its repeated encomia on Chaucer thus presents the dead poet as Hoccleve’s learned teacher, counsellor and literary role model. But Chaucer’s influence over Hoccleve and his role as a clerk and counsellor is not only talked about in the text. It is also expressed in the textimage relation in a way that exceeds the mere circularity described by Johnston and Knapp. The painted Chaucer points towards the text, and while he does so, his hand and parts of his forearm leave the frame of his picture.¹²⁴ His breaking the frame has two effects: As Peter Brown notes, “by being placed against a flat, lozengepattern background, and overlapping the frame with his hand, Chaucer seems – in contrast to the two-dimensional linearity of the text – three-dimensional, as if leaning out of a window in a wall”.¹²⁵ In addition to adding three-dimensionality to the figure, this breaking of the frame animates the painted poet: rather than staying confined to the boundaries allotted to him, he moves beyond these limits

 Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, pp. 275 – 276, as well as Greetham, “Self-Referential Artifacts: Hoccleve’s Persona as a Literary Device,” p. 244.  Greetham, “Self-Referential Artifacts: Hoccleve’s Persona as a Literary Device,” p. 244.  I do not find Douglas J. McMillan’s thesis that the Old Man in the Regement’s prologue is supposed to be Chaucer himself particularly convincing: “We will never really know I am afraid, but I believe Hoccleve is trying to be humble by not openly saying that great Chaucer’s spirit is visiting him, yet at the same time he is revealing further his deep love and respect for the master poet. I firmly believe that Hoccleve is suggesting that the old man is Chaucer.” (McMillan, “The Single Most Popular of Thomas Hoccleve’s Poems: The Regement of Princes,” p. 70.). But I think it is possible that readers are supposed to identify certain parallels between the Old Man, the prologue’s ultimate counsellor, and Chaucer, at least in function. If we accept this parallel, then the constellation becomes a little bit more complex, but no less convincing: Chaucer counselled Hoccleve; the Old man as a parallel to Chaucer counselled Hoccleve in the prologue; Hoccleve took the wisdom of both “old men” and counselled the prince.  The Chaucer-figure in Royal 17 D.vi is not set in a frame and thus does not break it in the literal sense. But considered in a metaphorical way, even this painted Chaucer leaves the space allotted to him and enters the text’s space.  Brown, “Images,” p. 313.

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and interferes spatially: As the Chaucer-figure actively breaks its own painted frame, it just as actively breaks into the text’s imagined frame. In Harley 4866, the column of the main text and the painting are so close to each other that the last word of the somewhat longer line 4997 (“That they that han of him lost thoght and mynde”) nearly touches the hanging sleeve of the poet’s protruding arm (see Fig. 6). In the Rosenbach manuscript, the hand points to a space between two stanzas, but still breaks into the text’s (imaginary) vertical frame. This has already been noted by Andrew James Johnston who says that “[…] Chaucer actually points at the text – albeit not his own – his hand leaving the confines of the illumination proper and reaching out into the very writing, […]”.¹²⁶ Johnston stresses that it is not Chaucer’s own text he is pointing at, and I believe this pointing gesture is crucial because it establishes, on a pictorial level, exactly the dichotomy and relationship of superiority and dependence that I described happening on a textual level above. So as the painted Chaucer points at the text, he does so in an animated, active way (as active as a painted figure can get): he breaks into the text’s space, shows his awareness of the text next to him, and holds out the possibility that his hand might grab text, remove or rewrite it (after all, he has a penner hanging around his neck). In other words: spatially, literally and metaphorically, Chaucer has his hand in the narrator’s text. Iconographically, Chaucer’s pointing hand can be seen as standing in two traditions, both of which invoke the context of giving counsel or exerting authority, thus adding to his clerkly image. One is the tradition of the nota-bene or pointing hand, a scribal device drawn into the manuscript margins that tells readers which lines are particularly interesting or important.¹²⁷ At times, these little hands come with a gloss reading “nota” or “nota bene”.¹²⁸ Chaucer’s hand – without the sleeve and the brown shading giving it three-dimensionality – has the exact same shape as a pointing hand in a manuscript margin: the long extended index finger, the visibility of the flexed fingers and thumb. In addition, his pointing hand is not only larger than the other one: it is also painted in a much more detailed way, with the shading and the fine but discernible outline  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 253.  That Chaucer’s right hand resembles a pointed hand has already been noticed by Peter Brown, who draws no further conclusions from this fact, however: Brown, “Images,” pp. 312– 313.  Nota bene signs most commonly come in the shape of pointing hands, sometimes with sleeves or cuffs, sometimes tinted. More information on these hands can be found in Ann Eljenholm Nichols, “Nota bene / index signs,” in An Index of Images in English Manuscripts from the Time of Chaucer to Henry VIII, ca. 1380 – ca. 1509, ed. by Ann Eljenholm Nichols, et al. (Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2000), p. 24.

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making the right hand just as elaborately drawn as the face – in contrast to the left hand. In other words: the pointing hand is drawn with some emphasis, it holds a special place in the painting. So Chaucer’s influence over the text is not only expressed in his gesture, but also in the way this gesture is drawn. By guiding our perception, Chaucer and his (scribal device‐) hand enact authority over the text not only because they direct our attention, but also because the gesture suggests that this guidance is necessary, in other words, that the text needs this kind of interference by Chaucer. Chaucer’s pointing hand gains in significance once Linne Mooney’s 2007 finding is taken into account: in her article “Some New Light on Thomas Hoccleve”, Mooney identifies the poet’s personal seal, which features, in the centre of a roundel, a “maniculum”, or pointing hand.¹²⁹ The seal is attached to a receipt in which Hoccleve confirms that he was paid his annuity. The document dates from 1402 and thus precedes the Regement by ca. ten years.¹³⁰ That the pointing hand is Hoccleve’s seal, his emblem and personal sign, somewhat relativises the influence Chaucer exerts over the Regement’s text. After all, one could argue that it is not his own hand that points towards the text and thus highlights particular parts of it, but the pointing hand is lent to him by Hoccleve himself. Without Hoccleve’s largesse, Chaucer would not be able to point. This emphasises that on a larger scale, too, Chaucer is given this (manuscript) space and this opportunity to point only because he was granted both the space – and the hand. We perceive Chaucer’s exertion of authority and, at a closer look, we realize that we perceive it in a Hocclevean manuscript, with Hoccleve’s nota-bene hand, and because Hoccleve gave it the space. I would still argue that Chaucer is presented here as an authority, a teacher-figure, a saintlike role model and master – but at the same time Hoccleve modifies this presentation of Chaucer through several small constraints: by emphasising that Chaucer is dead, by presenting him as old-fashioned, by lending him a hand, and, as I will show now, by adding a second layer of interpretation to this pointing hand, that of the oral tradition. The second tradition evoked by Chaucer’s pointing hand is that of raised hands or index fingers denoting acoustical performances. This is a common motif in pre-medieval and medieval painting. Michael Camille states that

 The text around the roundel is a matter of debate. While Mooney reads it as “va illa voluntee” (“he goes there willingly”) (Mooney, “Some New Light on Thomas Hoccleve,” p. 317), Richard Firth Green and Ethan Knapp argue that the text reads “VA: MA: VOLUNTEE:” (“Go, my will”), Richard Firth Green, and Ethan Knapp, “Thomas Hoccleve’s Seal,” Medium Aevum 77:2 (2008): p. 319.  Mooney, “Some New Light on Thomas Hoccleve,” pp. 315 – 318.

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“[t]he pointing index finger was a universal sign of acoustical performance, the speaking subject, or […] a neat way of expressing the oral witness within the written text.”¹³¹ And Pearsall seconds this when he says that it is quite possible that the pointing hand “indicate[s] in the more generally traditional way the speaker’s demand for attention.”¹³² Joyce Coleman’s study of aurality expressed in frontispieces describe how on prelection pictures – one of the most prominent examples of such an image is the Troilus-frontispiece – authors are depicted with an open book, often with one hand “extended, sometimes pointed, towards one of more clusters of people”.¹³³ Along the clerkly lines of the nota-bene hand, the speaking gesture might be seen as a reference to the “conseil and reed” which Hoccleve was used to receive from Chaucer.¹³⁴ This may be counsel concerning Hoccleve’s life, but also his literary activity, and even the Regement itself as a product of this activity. The portrait might thus depict Chaucer reacting to Hoccleve’s text in a critical way, advising Hoccleve how to change or modify aspects of it. But Chaucer’s raised hand may also be a speech marker in a different respect. We have to keep in mind that we see Chaucer gesturing like this not only in the three manuscripts of the Regement, but also in the witnesses of one of his own literary texts: The Ellesmere manuscript features a very similar, probably related, Chaucer-figure on a horse, also holding a rosary, and also pointing to the text. In this manuscript, Chaucer the narrator is telling his “Tale of Melibee”, the text he is pointing at, as one of a group of pilgrims on his way to Canterbury. So this speaking gesture in the Regement might be a reminder of the tale-teller Chaucer, and thus denote a different mode of literary creation and reception, the oral tradition. After all, Chaucer and the other pilgrims are not reading their stories from a manuscript, but they tell them without the support of a written text. That this oral mode of literary production is embedded in a written text which uses it in a literary-aesthetic way does not diminish

 Camille, “Seeing and Reading: Some Visual Implications of Medieval Literacy and Illiteracy,” p. 28.  Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: a Critical Biography, p. 288. Pearsall made this point in connection with the Ellesmere portrait of Chaucer the pilgrim, who is, indeed speaking. But as the images are so closely related, the pointing hand as a gesture of speaking applies to the Regement’s portrait just as much.  Joyce Coleman, “Aural Illumination: Books and Aurality in the Frontispieces to Bishop Chevrot’s Cité de Dieu,” in Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages: Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green, ed. by Mark Chinca and Christopher Young (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 224– 225.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 1960.

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the effective power of the orality of the tale-telling game.¹³⁵ In the light of what Mark Chinca and Christopher Young call the “‘weak’ theory of the relationship between literacy and orality [, which] favours […] an emphasis on coexistency and interaction”,¹³⁶ I see the Chaucer portrait in the Ellesmere manuscript as well as the Chaucer’s image in the manuscripts of the Regement as a form of interplay of the two forms of literary production: in both cases, the poet is brought into connection with orality, but in both cases, it is an orality that is embedded within a culture of writing. And in the case of the Regement, I argue that the interplay of orality and literacy is extended into the opposition of the two authors Chaucer and Hoccleve. This interplay presents both poets as belonging to two different cultures of literary production and reception. Chaucer is presented as participating in a mode of literary reception that is oral, possibly aural (thinking about the Troilus-frontispiece), but clearly not written. Chaucer’s orality functions as a marker of archaism and is further strengthened by the iconography of the Chaucer portrait itself. The way he is depicted there underlines the author’s old-fashioned and clerkly image. We encounter Chaucer as an old whitehaired man, wearing grey or black clothes that do not seem to be the height of fashion. The penner around his neck marks him first of all as a writer or clerk, just like his rosary marks him as a religious person. This impression is reinforced by those lines that emphasise his piety and strong attachment to the Virgin Mary in whose honour “he wroot ful many a lyne.”¹³⁷ Despite his arm that actively breaks the frame surrounding him, Chaucer altogether is portrayed as a rather static person: in two of the three manuscripts, we only see his torso in

 As Michaela Paasche Grudin remarks: “Nevertheless, the Canterbury Tales does not so much perpetuate an oral tradition as artfully imitate it.”: Michaela Paasche Grudin, “Discourse and the Problem of Closure in the Canterbury Tales,” PMLA 107:5 (1992): p. 1163. The discussion of orality and literacy in the Middle Ages is vast. My own discussion touches the discussion only lightly and ties in with Mark Chinca’s and Christopher Young’s idea that the two concepts do not form an opposition, but rather offer the potential of an interplay of both forms of communication: Mark Chinca and Christopher Young, eds., Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages: Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), p. 4. Other studies that argue along the same lines are: Matthew Innes, “Memory, Orality and Literacy in an Early Medieval Society,” Past & Present 158 (1998): pp. 3 – 37; Joyce Coleman, “Interactive Parchment: The Theory and Practice of Medieval English Aurality,” The Yearbook of English Studies 25 (1995): pp. 63 – 79. Coleman’s article offers a good overview and introduces the concept of ‘aurality’. Derek Brewer connects Chaucer’s poetry to the oral tradition: Derek Brewer, Chaucer: the Poet as Storyteller (London and Basingstoke: The Macmillan Press, 1984), esp. pp. 59 – 61.  Chinca/Young, Orality and Literacy in the Middle Ages: Essays on a Conjunction and its Consequences in Honour of D. H. Green, p. 1.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 4987.

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a box, so no bodily posture is discernible and, more importantly, no movement possible. Indeed, both in Harley 4866 and in the Rosenbach manuscript, Chaucer with his slightly rounded belly fills his box to a degree that restricts his moving and stirring. Ironically, it is precisely because Chaucer is extending his arm out of the frame that we consider the possibility that he might be a moving Chaucer, but this possibility is immediately limited in a most literal sense. And in the third manuscript, Royal 17 D. vi, Chaucer is painted as a free-standing full figure, but even as we see him in profile, his feet apart, there is nothing dynamic in his posture. He is standing firmly on both of his feet. James H. McGregor compares the image in Harley 4866 not so much to an author portrait, but rather to an “effigy of a dead man in brass or stone set in the wall of some English church,” which testifies to Chaucer’s static, statuesque immobility.¹³⁸ So altogether, the textual passages referring to Chaucer, his portraits and their relation to the text all present us with a poet who counsels and trains students, who is learned and allegedly experienced in writing didactic literature, who displays pen-case and rosary openly, who interferes with Hoccleve’s text in a notably clerkly way (with a pointing hand), and whose only interaction – which is limited through a frame – is with a text. In the manuscripts of the Regement of Princes, this concept of authorship is set into relation to the other author portrait, that depicting Hoccleve himself. In comparison to the depiction of Chaucer, the narrator and intra-textual author Thomas Hoccleve is visualised in a completely different way. His portrait presents a counter-model of medieval authorship, one that pertains to the written domain and presents us with an author figure who, as we will see in the next step, is firmly situated in a courtly context.

4.3.2 … Courtly Hoccleve While the depiction of Geoffrey Chaucer as a clerkly author is quite the same for all three portraits, the two images showing Thomas Hoccleve differ from each other quite considerably. In scholarly discussions, the two major images of the Regement are hardly ever set into relation to one another. The reason for this may be that while the Chaucer portrait is not only called a ‘portrait’, but also discussed as one, the same cannot be said for the second image, which is commonly referred to as the ‘presentation picture’. Concepts and categorisations in this area of art history are not always clear-cut, however, and this particular presentation

 McGregor, “The Iconography of Chaucer in Hoccleve’s De Regimine Principum and in the Troilus Frontispiece,” p. 344.

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picture also displays elements from other related genres that play a role in our interpretation. A brief look at these interrelated genre categories is necessary. First and foremost, the Regement’s presentation picture is part of the tradition of the so-called dedication or presentation miniatures: it depicts the moment in which a book is being offered to and accepted by the dedicatee of the work, Prince Henry.¹³⁹ This is, in a nutshell, the motif of dedication miniatures in medieval manuscripts: the moment in which a book is being handed over. But as soon as the people involved, those that offer and those that accept, have to be categorised, matters become complicated. Books can be presented or offered by their authors, their scribes, their illuminators, but also by their patrons and donors. And they can be accepted by either secular rulers or rich patrons, or by saints, Church Fathers, the Apostles, Mary, or Christ himself. At times, an intermediary saint is handed the book by a scribe / author / donor and is supposed to pass it on to a Christ- or God-figure, sitting on a throne and floating above the worldly scene.¹⁴⁰ But there is one thing that all these miniatures have in common: Ursula Peters stresses that the dedication picture, especially if it is closely connected to a prologue addressing the dedicatee of the work, moves the relation between author and dedicatee to the centre of attention.¹⁴¹  Michelle P. Brown distinguishes the two terms ‘dedication’ and ‘presentation picture’, stating that “[s]trictly speaking, the presentation miniature appears only in the presentation copy of a text, but such images frequently entered into the decorative program and would be included in subsequent copies (in which case the term dedication miniature is preferable)”, Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms, p. 102. For simplicity’s sake, I will not differentiate between the two concepts, but I will use dedication scene / picture / miniature to describe the concept and presentation scene / picture / miniature in my description of the two Regement’s dedication images.  For different definitions of dedication miniatures, see: W. Milde, “Dedikationsbild,” in Lexikon zur Buchmalerei, ed. by Helmut Engelhardt (Stuttgart: Anton Hiersemann, 2009), pp. 128 – 129; Christine Jakobi-Mirwald, Buchmalerei: Terminologie in der Kunstgeschichte, 3rd rev. ed. (Berlin: Reimer, 2008), p. 177. The most seminal publication about the dedication miniature is Joachim Prochno’s 1929 monograph, but his study does not offer clear differentiation, either: Joachim Prochno, Das Schreiber- und Dedikationsbild in der Deutschen Buchmalerei, vol. 1. Teil bis zum Ende des 11. Jahrhunderts (800 – 1100) (Leipzig / Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1929). The beginning of the tradition of presentation pictures in English-language manuscripts is traced by Joyce Coleman: Coleman, “The First Presentation Miniature in an English-Language Manuscript.”  “Auf das andere Ende des Illustrationsspektrums möglicher Textenstehungsgeschichten bezieht sich hingegeben der Bildtyp der Dedikation, der […] als Illustration des sich meist anschließenden Widmungsprologs den Autor-Gönner-Bezug in den Mittelpunkt rückt.” Ursula Peters, Das Ich im Bild: Die Figur des Autors in volkssprachigen Bilderhandschriften des 13. bis 16. Jahrhunderts (Köln et al.: Böhlau, 2008), pp. 58 – 59.

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Closely related to the dedication picture, and, indeed, in some cases impossible to differentiate, are donor portraits. These miniatures depict a similar scene, but there is one basic difference which applies to most miniatures, but not to all: donors do not necessarily offer an object to somebody, even though they act as patrons and commissioners of a book, a painting, an altarpiece or a building. In this role of commissioner or patron they are depicted, often in a panel painting, in a religious setting and in a situation of adoration of a crucified Christ, a Madonna or a saint.¹⁴² They kneel in adoration and prayer, often notably without offering a book or a model of the building they commissioned. This religious setting, as emphasised by Štěpán Vácha, might be the second major distinguishing feature to set apart donor portraits from dedication scenes, which are not necessarily religious in content.¹⁴³ One interesting feature of a donor portrait is that the donor conventionally is situated on the left side of the image, often in a much smaller scale than saints and holy persons he or she admires.¹⁴⁴ So dedication pictures and donor portraits share certain features, which will also play a role in the case of one of the two versions of presentation scenes in the Regement.

 For the distinction between dedication picture and donor portrait, see Dirk Kocks, “Die Stifterdarstellung in der italienischen Malerei des 13.–15. Jahrhunderts” (PhD thesis, Universität zu Köln, 1971), pp. 11– 16. Alarich Rooch draws a close connection between donor and dedication pictures, but only iconographically: “Die Darstellung der betenden und knienden Person ist aus der christlichen Bildtradition überliefert. In der Buchmalerei ist es besonders die Dedikationsseite, einer der ersten Seiten der Handschrift, die eine Verbindung zwischen dem religiösen Inhalt und einer Darstellung des Eigentümers oder Auftraggebers leistet. Ein verkleinerter Größenmaßstab gegenüber den heiligen Personen separiert den Auftraggeber von der sakralen Szenerie der Darstellung, wenngleich er im Zuge der wachsenden Popularität der Stundenbücher im 14. Jahrhundert tendenziell in den Rahmen dieser Szenerie stärker miteinbezogen wurde. Diese Art der Dedikationsdaestellung (sic) ist von dem zu behandelnden Stifterbild auf einer Bildtafel zu unterscheiden.” Alarich Rooch, Stifterbilder in Flandern und Brabant: Stadtbürgerliche Selbstdarstellung in der sakralen Malerei des 15. Jahrhunderts (Essen: Die Blaue Eule, 1988), p. 12. A short but precise definition of the donor portrait can be found in Brigitte Riese, “Stifterbildnis,” in Seemanns Lexikon der Ikonographie: Religiöse und Profane Bildmotive, ed. by Brigitte Riese (Leipzig: E. A. Seemann, 2007), p. 393: “Darstellung des Auftraggebers bzw. Stifters (Donator) auf dem von ihm gestifteten Kunstwerk. Bekannt sind Stifterfiguren seit frühchristlicher Zeit, auf Mosaiken zunächst als Stifter von Kirchen mit einem Kirchenmodell als Attribut in einer Art eines Dedikationsbildes.”  Štěpán Vácha, Der Herrscher auf dem Sakralbild zur Zeit der Gegenreformation und des Barock: Eine ikonologische Untersuchung zur herrscherlichen Repräsentation Kaiser Ferdinands II. in Böhmen (Prag: Artefactum, 2009), p. 29.  “In der Regel ist der Stifter zur Rechten, vom Betrachter aus links, dem heiligen Geschehen zugeordnet.”, Riese, “Stifterbildnis,” p. 393.

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A third category and one that includes the dedication picture is that of the author portrait. Margaret Rickert is the first scholar to note that the two figures in the presentation miniature in Arundel 38 were executed in such detail that the painting must have been conceived to be a portrait: [C]ertainly they are distinguished in age, in complexion, in features, and even in expression […]. Henry is richly dressed in an ermine-lined blue gown with fashionable dagged sleeves hanging to the ground. A curious feature of the shading of the folds is the use of a golden yellow pigment which gives the effect of gilding; his girdle and coronet are gold. Hoccleve wears a madder pink gown with very high collar. His face is florid, in contrast to Henry’s pale complexion; his hair is dark, Henry’s golden brown; his mouth is firm with a bitter droop at the corners, Henry’s is straight and thin-lipped.¹⁴⁵

Studies like that of Ursula Peters have shown that author portraits depict the author in all stages of textual production: thinking and contemplating before the writing process, then writing or dictating the text, then presenting or performing the text, and finally handing over the finished book to a patron or group of patrons.¹⁴⁶ In many cases, the author portrait seems to have been set before the beginning of the text. As Elizabeth Sears notes, “[t]o place an author portrait before a text, in the central Middle Ages, was to declare authority of that text. The image focused readers’ attention, before reading, on the voice speaking through the transcribed words.”¹⁴⁷ This can be applied to the depiction of the (intra-textual) author Thomas Hoccleve that is to be found not at the very beginning of the Regement, but – significantly – after its prologue and before the main part. But besides ascribing the text to a particular author, Sears continues to argue, the author portrait also tells readers more about his or her life:

 Margaret Rickert, Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages, 2nd ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1965), p. 185, Kathleen Scott qualifies what Rickert says about the folds in Prince Henry’s robe: “The folds of the robe are highlighted with a gold wash, unusual at this period (not with yellow pigment, as in Rickert, Painting in Britain).” Kathleen Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390 – 1490, vol. II: Catalogue (London: Harvey Miller Publishers, 1996), p. 159. Ultimately, however, this qualification does not influence my argument.  Ursula Peters, “Werkauftrag und Buchübergabe: Textentstehungsgeschichten in Autorbildern volkssprachiger Handschriften des 12. bis 15. Jahrhunderts,” in Autorbilder: Zur Medialität Literarischer Kommunikation in Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit, ed. by Gerald Kapfhammer, WolfDietrich Löhr, and Barbara Nitsche (Münster: Rhema, 2007), pp. 25 – 63.  Elizabeth Sears, “Portraits in Counterpoint: Jerome and Jeremiah in an Augsburg Manuscript,” in Reading Medieval Images: the Art Historian and the Object, ed. by Elizabeth Sears and Thelma K. Thomas (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2002), p. 61.

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It [i.e. the portrait, E.K.] served both to signal an author’s high stature and to establish that author’s particular status, for illuminators employed an array of visual signs – costume, attributes, setting, posture, gesture, expression – to locate a writer among writers. Readers might learn whether authors were sacred, ecclesiastical, secular, or pagan, whether they were monks or nuns, prelates, priests, or teachers, whether they had written the text alone or jointly with a secretary, a redactor, or another author, and at whose behest or in whose honor.¹⁴⁸

Sears sets out to study a special case of an author portrait, one of the Church father Jerome that faces the image of Jeremiah, whose texts Jerome comments on. While her assumption that “[s]uch images are highly revealing of medieval attitudes toward authors and authorship” refers to this outstanding double portrait, I believe that the same can be said for most, if not all, medieval author portraits.¹⁴⁹ In a similar way, Christel Meier speaks of a “hermeneutical potential of author portraits for studying the types of self-conceptions medieval authors had”.¹⁵⁰ So while the two versions of the presentation picture are basically dedication scenes, they at the same time depict the intra-textual author Thomas Hoccleve and can thus be seen as falling into the same category as the Chaucer portrait. Both author portraits can be studied in respect of the conceptions of authorship they display. Two manuscripts still contain the presentation picture: Arundel 38 (see Fig. 8) and Royal 17 D. vi (see Fig. 9). It comes at a crucial point in the text, namely at the break between prologue and the Regement proper. The prologue ends with the stanza

 Ibid.  Ibid.  “[D]ie hermeneutische Leistung von Autorenbildern für das Verständnis des Autors im Mittelalter”, Christel Meier, “Ecce auctor: Beiträge zur Ikonographie Literarischer Urheberschaft im Mittelalter,” Frühmittelalterliche Studien 34 (2000): p. 340. In her article, Meier establishes sixteen categories of author portraits, categories which are not always easily differentiated: the depiction of the writing author; the author as compiler; the author holding his book; the dictating author; the author and his/her auctores; the dialogical double-portrait of two authors; attribution of the author’s competence to a saint or Church father: the Über-author; the ultimate author: God holding the book; the author in the moment of inspiration; the moment of commissioning the work; the dedication of the work; the patron depicted as an author; a scene of rewarding and paying the author; authors in a position of devotion; the teaching or lecturing author; and the author with a redactor. A similar categorisation is made by Elizabeth Salter and Derek Pearsall: Elizabeth Salter and Derek Pearsall, “Pictorial Illustration of Late Medieval Poetic Texts: the Role of the Frontispiece or Prefatory Picture,” in Medieval Iconography and Narrative: A Symposium, ed. by Flemming Gotthelf Andersen (Odense: Odense University Press, 1980), pp. 115 – 116.

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Recordyng in my mynde the lessoun That he me yaf, I hoom to mete wente. And on the morwe sette I me adoun, And penne and ynke and parchemeyn I hente, And to parfourme his wil and his entente I took corage, and whyles it was hoot, Unto my lord the Prince thus I wroot:¹⁵¹

At this point, both manuscripts start a new folio with the presentation picture which covers about three quarters of the page. It is at this point, too, when the narrator Hoccleve turns into the intra-textual author Hoccleve. Immediately after he described the production of the Regement proper in such detail, we encounter the presentation picture that depicts him offering the book to Prince Henry.¹⁵² One characteristic of the presentation picture is that it not only covers almost the whole folio, but that it also covers the whole width of the text column. This may sound banal at first, but gains in significance once compared to the Chaucer portrait, which is not only much smaller, but which is additionally positioned in the margin, next to the text. This means that spatially, the two images seem to correspond to the two types of text in the Regement: while the presentation picture corresponds to the central text, the Chaucer portrait inhabits the space of the marginal glosses. The image in Arundel 38 is usually described as a very fine work. A brief excursion into the production of the presentation copy Arundel 38 and its dedication scene will show why scholars believe it to be the better of the two paintings. It has been described as “the work of the most skilled artist in London or Westminster […] in 1411.”¹⁵³ According to Michael C. Seymour, the manuscript was produced as a presentation copy for Thomas FitzAlan in or shortly after 1411, during Hoccleve’s lifetime.¹⁵⁴ The style of the presentation picture in Arundel 38 has

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 2010 – 2016.  The quoted passage that describes Hoccleve’s starting the writing process is only one of many, as Chapter 2 of this book has shown.  Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve,” p. 622.  Opinions as to who the dedicatee of this presentation copy was vary: J. J. G. Alexander states that “[t]he royal arms with label are on f.1 so it seems likely that this is the dedication copy”, meaning the dedication copy for Prince Henry himself: Jonathan J. G. Alexander, “Painting and Manuscript Illumination for Royal Patrons in the Later Middle Ages,” in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, ed. by V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne (London: Duckworth, 1983), p. 148. Kate Harris argues convincingly that the coats of arms depicted below the presentation picture are not those of the FitzAlan family, Earls of Arundel, as originally thought by M.C. Seymour, but that slight differences in the coat make them the sign of Mowbray, which makes John Mowbray, second Duke of Norfolk the original owner of Arundel 38: Harris, “The Patron of British Library MS Arundel 38,” pp. 462– 463.

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repeatedly been brought in connection with the work of Herman Scheerre, one of the – if not the – most prolific manuscript illuminators of the time. While Charles L. Kuhn found that “this composition [i. e. the Arundel presentation scene] has certain elements suggested by Herman’s production”,¹⁵⁵ Seymour states that the presentation picture is “strongly influenced by the Hermann Scheere style”.¹⁵⁶ D. H. Turner’s more detailed study of the Bedford Hours and Psalter identifies the artist of the presentation picture as a nameless collaborator in Herman Scheerre’s workshop. In fact, Turner’s study of the Bedford Hours and Psalter (British Museum, Additional MS 42131) reveals that this manuscript was illuminated by a number of different artists of the Scheere workshop, with Scheere’s work displaying more traditional traces and the nameless artist’s work being more advanced technically. The same style Turner finds in Arundel 38, where “the figures of Hoccleve and the prince exhibit in their features a delicate and expert characterisation and modelling”.¹⁵⁷ This illuminator who might have been Scheerre’s student was, according to Turner, not only much more innovative in his works than Scheerre himself, but he describes him as “the finest illuminator in the Bedford Hours”.¹⁵⁸ The presentation picture in Arundel 38 is, if we follow Turner’s analysis, an earlier work of this talented artist.¹⁵⁹ In comparison to the portrait in Arundel 38, the presentation scene in Royal 17 D. vi is not given much credit: It is not directly derived from the original picture, and it is probably a pirated free-hand reconstruction. The artist lacked both a sense of proportion and a sense of the human figure,

 Charles L. Kuhn, “Herman Scheerre and English Illumination of the Early Fifteenth Century,” The Art Bulletin 22:3 (1940): p. 155.  Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve,” p. 622.  D. H. Turner, “The Bedford Hours and Psalter,” Apollo 76 (1962): p. 269.  Ibid., p. 269a. J. J. G. Alexander argues along the same lines: Alexander, “Painting and Manuscript Illumination for Royal Patrons in the Later Middle Ages,” pp. 148 – 149.  Turner, “The Bedford Hours and Psalter,” p. 269b. What neither Turner nor any other scholar has mentioned so far is the sketch of Prince Henry’s head in the manuscript’s margin. According to Jonathan J. G. Alexander, marginal sketches can be commonly found in European illuminated manuscripts: Alexander, Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work, pp. 64– 69. One less positive evaluation of the presentation picture in Arundel 38 comes from Kathleen Scott, who, for example, finds artistic execution not very satisfying: “The kneeling young man in a pink gown is awkwardly drawn with one knee askew. Arms are unnaturally short and, on Henry’s figure, particularly ill-suited to the elongated height of the figure. On faces the greyishtan complexion tone is laid over with vertical marking in red pigment, one face with a much heavier (and not very skilled) application of red.” Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390 – 1490, II: Catalogue, p. 159. Scott’s evaluation comes from an art historian’s point of view, which, as I believe, betrays her modern perspective on pre-modern art to a very high degree.

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and so achieved neither dignity nor credibility. His dwarfed poet and ungainly prince […] make a sad pair.¹⁶⁰

The painting under fire here is, without a doubt, no masterpiece, but this study is not concerned with evaluating quality and I believe that the picture still deserves attention, because some of its particular features affect our perception of the text-image relation in the Regement in general. Seymour’s assumption that the presentation painting in Royal 17 D. vi is a copy of Arundel 38 in absentia of the model is convincing once the paintings are compared: both pictures feature the same basic components, which are a standing prince, a kneeling narrator-turned author Hoccleve, and a book that is being held by Hoccleve and lifted towards the prince’s hands. Both pictures are framed, and both occupy the same position on the page in relation to the text (see Figs. 8 and 9): they both cover more than half the page, and they are both framed ornately with a border that encircles the image as well as the text below the image on three sides. These very basic parallels make it probable that the painting in the earlier Arundel 38 was the model for the later one in Royal 17 D. vi or that they shared one exemplar. But the images also betray numerous differences which support the assumption that the image in Royal 17 D. vi is no one-to-one copy: First, the positions of Hoccleve and prince are reversed. While Hoccleve is kneeling on the left in Royal 17 D. vi, he is on the right in Arundel 38. Second and at first glance not so important: the book in Arundel 38 is quite large, bound in red leather with black and golden clasps, and it is held by both the poet and the prince at the same time. In contrast, the book in Royal 17 D. vi is the same dark pink colour as the prince’s gown, it is slightly trapeze-shaped and it is only in Hoccleve’s hand, while the prince stretches his hands towards the book without touching it. Altogether, the book here is not painted in a way that is as conspicuous as the one in Arundel 38. And third, a few objects added in Royal 17 D. vi differentiate the paintings further: the prince holds a thin white cane with a slightly thicker top end in his left hand. In between Hoccleve and the prince there lies an object, which could possibly be the poet’s hat, because it has the same colour as his shirt. In addition, Hoccleve wears, hanging from his belt, a purse. As the motifs of his poverty and the royal patronage he longs for are so prominent in the text, one could argue that the purse, and possibly the pocket in the prince’s gown were inspired by it. While the differences may seem minimal and of no consequence at first, they do affect our perception of the relation between Prince Henry and Thomas Hoc-

 Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve,” p. 622b.

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cleve. The most basic difference is that the spatial positions of prince and author are reversed. This becomes siginficant once we examine the direction and movement of our gaze onto the presentation picture. Joyce Coleman, when studying the position of the figure of Chaucer in the Troilus and Criseyde-frontispiece, talks about “a basic rule of visual rhetoric: that the most important person in a picture stands the highest.”¹⁶¹ This certainly holds true for both presentation pictures: the prince looks down on the poet both times, and the effect of supremacy is strengthened further by the submission enacted in Hoccleve’s kneeling posture. I argue, however, that our gaze in the case of the presentation picture, is not only governed by this principle of hierarchy or rank – with our eyes moving from the tall person to the shorter person –, but also by our reading direction – from left to right. And once this second principle comes into play, it does matter indeed whether the taller person is standing on the left or on the right. On encountering the presentation picture in Arundel 38, the two principles go hand in hand: we see the standing prince on the left and our gaze is guided over the prince’s extended arms downwards to the kneeling poet on the right. In the presentation picture in the Royal manuscript, the positions are reversed, and thus the two principles collide. We find it hard to direct our gaze: do we start on the left with the kneeling Hoccleve and hence prioritise him over the prince? Or do we follow the principle of height and thus importance by starting our gaze on the right, moving against our reading direction? These are no conscious choices to make, but rather fractions of seconds of indecision when we first look at the image. So while the image in Arundel 38 makes it possible for our eyes to move smoothly from important person/left to less important person/ right, the other presentation picture creates no such easy access for our gaze. This, as will become clear in the following, is not only due to the corresponding or non-corresponding principles that affect our gaze. There is more to both pictures that affects our perception, and this is, most centrally, the depicted book.

4.3.3 The Presentation Picture in Arundel 38 When looking at the presentation picture in Arundel 38, our gaze moves smoothly from the standing prince on the left down to the kneeling author on the right. But it is not only the coincidence of reading direction and the hierarchical principle that makes this movement possible. There are other factors at play. First of

 Coleman, “Where Chaucer Got His Pulpit: Audience and Intervisuality in the Troilus and Criseyde Frontispiece,” p. 123.

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all, both men are quite close to one another; their clothes touch in several places: at the bottom of their cloaks and at the knee. Most importantly, their hands touch as they both hold the book. Second, the poet’s body is facing the prince completely, while we as readers see it from the side. And the prince’s body, half facing the audience, half the kneeling author, is open to receiving the book through a cloak with ermine trimmings that emphasises the open front of his body and thus reflects the openness in the prince’s stance. Other aspects further support the connection between Henry and Hoccleve: One is the fact that they are depicted as being alone. This may not sound significant at first, but as Joyce Coleman’s study of early presentation pictures in English-language manuscripts has shown, French pendants to the image in Arundel 38 often feature a number of courtiers that populate the presentation scene. They are missing in Arundel 38, however, and instead, Hoccleve “has placed himself in solitary relationship with the prince. […] Furthermore promoting that intimacy […] is the fact that Henry is depicted standing, rather than seated in a chair of state.”¹⁶² Another feature connecting Hoccleve and the prince is the background pattern with its dark surface, on which golden ornaments grow like a fern, its branches ending in scrolls. Two of these branches, growing out of the same stem, first circle around and then end in the narrator’s and the prince’s head respectively. And yet another aspect makes the two men form a unit: the prince’s arms, which form two parallel curved lines, are bent towards the kneeling Hoccleve. He, in turn, stretches his arm towards the prince. The prince’s arms and the narrator’s arms are situated on one imaginary curved line. The distance between the two men is bridged by the book, which connects them. The book focuses our attention in the painting in Arundel 38, where it occupies a very prominent position in the centre of the painting, both literally and symbolically. In addition, its colours also make it stand out: it is clad in red, a colour that is not paralleled anywhere in the painting.¹⁶³ It is the brightest colour in the picture, and it stands out against the prince’s blue cloak and the dark pink-orange background. The contrasting effect is heightened through the white pages one sees in between the two covers, and the black clasps that close the book securely. These contrasting colours and the central position in the image bring the book to the viewer’s attention immediately. But not only is the book as an object highlighted through this depiction. I

 Coleman, “The First Presentation Miniature in an English-Language Manuscript,” p. 429.  This may seem quite normal to modern ears, but images in medieval manuscripts, or at least those in the manuscripts of the Regement, often only contained a few colours, which then had to be repeated in several objects or areas. In the Royal-presentation picture, for example, the book has the same colour as the dress worn by the prince and the hose worn by the kneeling narrator.

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argue that when our attention is drawn to the book, it is also drawn to what the book does in this painting, to its function as a bridge between the poet and the prince. Both hold the book in their hands, the book even makes them touch and thus connects them in the most literal sense. What the image shows, in other words, is not only the one moment when the book is handed from author to prince,¹⁶⁴ from intra-textual author to intra-textual reader, but it is really the moment in which the book as an object, and metaphorically as a shared experience – one of writing and one of reading – connects two people who are at first sight depicted as standing on two different hierarchical levels. The image thus depicts a moment that, following Lessing avant la lettre, could not be any more pregnant.¹⁶⁵ The prince obviously still is the person higher in rank, but when it comes to bodily size regardless of their postures, both men are equal.¹⁶⁶ By accepting Hoccleve’s book and thus accepting the experience the book symbolises – the experience of being counselled by him –, Prince Henry enters a relationship that necessarily levels out hierarchical differences to a certain degree. And the moment that we see in the picture makes it obvious that the prince has already accepted the book, as he already is holding it. Kathleen Scott goes as far as saying that “[u]sually the direction of presentation is made clear through the position of hands, but in this scene there is ambiguity about giver and receiver.”¹⁶⁷ Scott’s analysis does not take into account the textual background, with its descriptions of authorial activity and with the words of the compiler to the prince, Hoccleve’s address to Prince Henry, which immediately follow the presentation picture. I believe that this textual frame makes it quite clear who is receiving the book from whom. But what Scott’s claim shows is that this presentation scene indeed depicts an equalising moment. It is worthwhile to have a closer look at her argument, which comes to the conclusion that it is not Hoccleve at all who is presenting the book here. It is necessary to quote her at length:

 One cannot be entirely sure, of course, if the book is handed from the narrator to the prince, and if it is the Regement at all. Any other interpretation, however, is hard to support: why should the prince hand a book to the narrator, and which book could it be, if not the Regement of Princes? The text before and below the picture further corroborates this interpretation.  For a discussion of time in visual art in connection with Lessing’s concept of the “pregnant moment”, see Mose Baras, The Language of Art: Studies in Interpretation (New York and London: New York University Press, 1997), pp. 257– 260.  It is hard to provide proof for this claim, but if one measures the bodies of both men, summing up the narrator’s body parts, one reaches the same for both figures.  Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390 – 1490, II: Catalogue, p. 159.

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The scene is moreover probably not the standard author-patron presentation, as has generally been assumed, but a gift-giving scene. Not only is it unlikely that Hoccleve could have paid for this manuscript […], but at this period (c. 1411), Hoccleve was about fortyfour years old, with nearly twenty-four years of labour behind him, and probably not the fresh, young-looking man of the Arundel miniature. In addition, the youth’s gown would have been inappropriate for the clerk of Hoccleve’s station. […] The kneeling figure in the scene is therefore likely to represent John Mowbray (b. 1392); Lord Mowbray and Segrave, later 2nd Duke of Norfolk, who was aged nineteen in 1411.¹⁶⁸

This argumentation provides interesting and fruitful thoughts: the difference in age that did exist between prince and empirical author has been erased from the narrator’s face: Hoccleve looks much younger than his historical counterpart was around 1412. And in addition, his gown is described as “inappropriate for the clerk of Hoccleve’s station.” Rather than coming to the conclusion that because the kneeling man looks young and Hoccleve at that time would have been old, it cannot be Hoccleve, I will approach this image and the depiction of the poet from a different point of view: just like in the prologue, where the narrator offers us the fiction of an autobiography as a literary device, here, the image employs clothes as well as facial features in order to create the fiction of a young and courtly author who forms a kind of counsellor’s pact with Prince Henry. Clothes “have the power to transform the natural human body into a social body of appearance and meaning.”¹⁶⁹ Susan Crane’s study shows that what we perceive of medieval clothes has to be seen as a performance in a double sense: first, because it reaches us as a description in a text or as depicted visually; and second, she sees “court clothing as a symbolic medium in the later Middle Ages [in which] the courtier’s dress was a visual manifesto for its wearer.”¹⁷⁰ As Laura F. Hodges asserts in her study of clothes in Chaucer, authors of medieval literature knew that a person’s inner values may be “signified by dress”, but that at the same time our outer appearance may be completely misleading. Authors like Chaucer, Hodges claims, exploited this fact in what she aptly calls “costume rhetoric.”¹⁷¹ Susan Crane shows how it is not only clothes that “talk” and create  Ibid.  “Kleidung vermag […], den natürlichen Körper des Menschen in einen sozialen Erscheinungskörper zu transformieren,” David Ganz and Marius Rimmele, “Bildspezifische Sinnstiftung von Kleidung in der Vormoderne,” in Kleider Machen Bilder: Vormoderne Strategien Vestimentärer Bildsprache, ed. by David Ganz and Marius Rimmele (Emsdetten and Berlin: Edition Imorde, 2012), p. 8 (my translation).  Susan Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), p. 8.  Both quotes: Laura F. Hodges, Chaucer and Clothing: Clerical and Academic Costume in the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), p. 3.

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a social body: arms, motto signs and other forms of accessory were used to this end.¹⁷² I believe the same holds true for the depiction of faces and of body postures. Hoccleve’s posture is worth a look: while he is always described as kneeling, in fact, neither of his knees touches the ground. Rather, the right leg is standing in an angle of 90 degrees, the right knee touching the prince’s leg, while the left leg is pulled backwards, with the left foot keeping the balance, but with the left knee lifted off the ground slightly. This elaborate position is further enhanced in the picture by the flowing folds of the poet’s gown, as well as the by the elegant curve that starts out at his shoulders, follows down his back and extends via the left leg backwards until the gown falls down over Hoccleve’s left foot. That we do not get to see his feet, which would give us absolute certainty about his posture, adds to the elegant nature of the “kneeling” Hoccleve. The gown’s pink colour as well as its special collar add to the fashionable impression Hoccleve’s appearance makes. The flowing curves of his robe’s folds are complemented by the folds in the prince’s gown, which cascade all the length of his body and form a pool of folded fabric at his feet, which, again, we do not get to see. This depiction of the poet’s posture, just like his clothes, give proof that the Hoccleve depicted is able to behave and move in courtly society in an appropriate manner: He knows how to bow, he knows how to dress, and with his young and fresh looks he is an attractive addition to courtly circles. Altogether, this presentation scene in Arundel 38 not only creates a certain equality between poet and prince, it also situates both of them in an elegant and courtly setting, with elaborate clothing and even more elaborate bodily postures.

4.3.4 The Presentation Picture in Royal 17 D. vi The presentation picture in Royal 17 D. vi, by comparison, shows the same situation, but opens up different relations between Thomas Hoccleve and Prince Henry. This, again, starts with our gaze that is not offered a clear trajectory. On the one hand, this is due to the reversed positions of prince and author: while the prince is taller, thus higher in rank and the first thing we see, he is also standing on the right side and we have to read “against” our normal reading direction if our gaze wants to follow the hierarchy-principle described by Coleman. But on the other hand, other elements and features of the miniature additionally disturb the movement of our perception. One is the difference in height

 Crane, The Performance of Self: Ritual, Clothing, and Identity During the Hundred Years War, especially Ch.1 “Talking Garments”, pp. 10 – 39.

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that is exaggerated in the Royal-picture: even in a standing position, Hoccleve would have only measured up to the prince’s lower ribs. This increases the distance between the two men, not only in size, but also in hierarchy and, implicitly, in importance. The proximity in age that we saw in the picture in Arundel 38, which made prince and narrator look closer in age than they actually were, cannot be found here. On the contrary, young Prince Henry looks much older, as his face is depicted with sunk-in eyes and no colour in his cheek. The kneeling Hoccleve does not have the liveliest complexion, either, but he looks quite a few years younger than the prince. This reverses the prince’s and Hoccleve’s actual ages at the time of the Regement’s production. The connection, and thus the equalising moment that we see in the Arundel painting, is further prevented through the depiction of the book in the image in Royal 17 D. vi, which is quite different from the one in Arundel 38. It is small, oblique and, with its dark pink colour, hardly discernible against the red background. In addition, it is not situated in the centre of the picture, which, instead, shows the prince’s empty hand. And, most importantly, the book does not connect the two men. While the prince, admittedly, reaches out to receive the book, the image freezes the situation before the presentation itself takes place. Our attention is even more distracted from the book because unlike the miniature in Arundel 38, which literally only features the prince, the poet and the book, Royal 17 D. vi also includes several other objects: a red hat lying on the green ground in between the two men (and being more noticeable through the stronger contrast in colours); a white staff held by the prince; a purse attached to Hoccleve’s girdle; and, possibly relating to the purse, a slightly gaping pocketlike opening in the prince’s dress. These objects arouse our attention and make us wonder about their nature and their function. The two objects that can be explained most easily are the poet’s purse and the pocket opening in the prince’s gown. Both might be references to the Regement’s repeated plea for money. The object lying in between Hoccleve and the prince, which is painted in a red that is quite obtrusive against the green ground, is most probably the poet’s hat, as it has the same colour as his gown. It was taken off, which might be a gesture of subordination due to a prince, similar to the admiration shown to a saint. The white staff held by the prince is another object that has no parallel in Arundel 38. Like the hat, the staff is also quite visible against its background. It is hard to say what it is: It is too simple for a sceptre, which would have been fitting for a prince. It is too short for a shepherd’s staff, which would have added a religious connotation to the image. One additional parallel comes from some author portraits, which show a situation of dictation, in which an author dictates his text to his scribe. While he is dictating, he holds a staff that is described by Ursula Peters as “a kind of judicial staff” (Gerichtsstab), used by judges

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as a sign of their authority.¹⁷³ The Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch: Wörterbuch der älteren deutschen Rechtssprache, the Dictionary for terms and concepts of the law in older German legal language, quotes sources from the 15th century onwards. According to the dictionary, the staff was the judge’s sign of jurisdiction: “da er saß an offenner schrann und den gerichtzstab in der hant het nach der stat recht zu Lawffen” (from 1457).¹⁷⁴ The staff could also be used to swear an oath on, similar to the Bible in today’s U.S. American courts: “wann ein neuer amptman n einem flecken gesetzt wiert, der ist auch zu erkantnus des gerichts an den gerichtstab zu greifen schuldig und den aidpfennig zu erlegen” (1585).¹⁷⁵ Understanding the staff as instrument of jurisprudence adds another level of superiority to the prince. The most important differences between the images in Arundel 38 and Royal 17 D. vi is the poet’s posture. Not only is he not as close to the prince – they do not even come close to touching. In addition, he is kneeling with both knees on the ground, which is a posture that is more appropriate for devotional prayer or meditation rather than the presentation of a book to a prince. The combination of Hoccleve’s much smaller height with his kneeling posture immediately brings to mind the iconography of donor portraits, in which donors and commissioners are depicted as kneeling in prayer or adoration of a Madonna with a Christ child or a crucified Christ. As mentioned above, donors mostly knelt on the left side of the painting and were depicted in a smaller scale than the holy figures. The prince’s body, in accordance, is not only taller and very lean, he seems to be outgrowing the painting altogether. Both his crown and the seam of this gown almost touch the frame around the image. This further emphasises the difference in height between poet and prince, and it adds an almost unnatural aspect to the princely appearance. His extended and empty hand, which is situated in the centre of the picture, is even larger than his other hand, and as it is not really extended into the direction of the book that is offered to him, it looks closer to a beckoning or even blessing gesture than to an accepting one. The iconography of the donor portrait is corroborated even more when we consider that the old-looking tall prince looks almost supernatural and saintly in comparison to the short and subdued Hoccleve. Despite the differences between the two paintings, which once more show us that the manuscript context affects the semantic potential of illuminations, both

 Peters, “Werkauftrag und Buchübergabe: Textentstehungsgeschichten in Autorbildern volkssprachiger Handschriften des 12. bis 15. Jahrhunderts,” pp. 34– 35.  “Gerichtsstab,” in Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch: Wörterbuch der Älteren Deutschen Rechtssprache, ed. by Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (Weimar: Böhlau, 1951), p. 373a.  Ibid., p. 373b.

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paintings show a young Hoccleve who is about to become a member of Prince Henry’s court. On the one hand, Arundel 38 presents its poet Hoccleve as a young and elegant courtly author, a man who seems to have been accepted into the intimate circles of Prince Henry. Not only are prince and author depicted as close to one another in age as well as spatially, but they also share the book both as an object and as a common experience. By accepting the Regement he is offered, the prince accepts Hoccleve as a counsellor and subjects himself to this counsel. In Royal 17 D. vi, Hoccleve is depicted as a humble and religious man offering a book. He is welcomed or blessed by the prince who is portrayed like a saint in a donor portrait. But even if this version of the presentation picture emphasises the hierarchical difference between the two men, Henry’s welcoming gesture and the painting’s religious connotations make the depicted moment one of acceptance and admission, albeit one with a pronounced religious tinge. The most important feature of the authorship concept depicted in the two presentation pictures thus is the courtly setting in which Hoccleve moves.

4.3.5 The Regement’s Cultural Programme of Depicting Authorship Just as Alastair Minnis ascribes different self-conceptions to different authors as expressed in their literary products (Learned Gower vs. ‘Lewd’ Chaucer), we can examine images of authors as depicting various author-concepts.¹⁷⁶ Comparing Chaucer’s and Hoccleve’s portraits in the manuscripts of the Regement, it seems that two conceptions of authorship are at play here. In his book chapter “Chaucer’s Visual Image and the Identity of the Poet”, Andrew James Johnston studies “the way the early illuminations raise questions about the social role of literature.”¹⁷⁷ Johnston compares the Chaucer in the Troilus-frontispiece to the Chaucer presented in the Regement’s Harley 4866. He argues that the two images depict Chaucer as belonging to different social circles and as being embedded in two different literary scenes and almost two models of authorial self-conception. On the one hand, the Troilus-frontispiece “creates the social fiction of an entirely courtly and aristocratic poet Chaucer”¹⁷⁸ and depicts him as a member of a literary scene that is not only aristocratic, but oral as well. On the other hand, the Chaucer in Harley 4866 is firmly rooted in a clerkly circle through the obvious

 Alastair Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), especially chapter 5 “Literary Theory and Literary Practice”, pp. 160 – 211.  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 251.  Ibid., p. 254.

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sign of his pen-case, as well as the rosary that “serves to stress his orthodoxy.”¹⁷⁹ And as Chaucer points to the text and highlights its importance, Johnston reads the portrait as “yet another move in the general strategy [i. e. Hoccleve’s strategy] of clerkifying Chaucer, a strategy which seems very natural for Hoccleve, the textual craftsman.”¹⁸⁰ As I have shown in my argumentation above, not only the picture, but also the text of the Regement supports this “strategy”. And with Chaucer’s pointing hand, yet another pictorial element has been identified that makes Hoccleve’s master more of a clerkly than a courtly poet. Johnston goes a step further and argues that “even if we cannot determine the relative chronology of the two manuscripts, the Chaucer portrait in the presentation copy of his Regement of Princes must, therefore, be seen at least as a direct reaction to the kind of cultural programme exemplified in the Troilus frontispiece.”¹⁸¹ If Hoccleve reacted to the Troilus-frontispiece and its “cultural programme”, as Johnston calls it, by depicting Chaucer as a clerk in his own manuscripts, then we must expand Johnston’s assumptions and look at Hoccleve’s own portrayal in the presentation pictures of the Regement’s manuscripts to find out if and how this depiction fits into the equation. There might indeed be a pictorial programme to be found in the manuscripts of Hoccleve’s own text, a programme that employs a particular style of depicting Chaucer in order to actually affect our perception of the depiction of Hoccleve himself. A starting point for tracing the idea that the two authors’ portraits are pictorial representations of two different conceptions of authorship, actively pursued by Hoccleve, is the discipleship topos. A common medieval motif, the idea of discipleship “asserts the humilitas of the successor before his master”.¹⁸² By praising the deceased poet, calling him ‘maistir’ and ‘fadir’, and at the same time emphasising his own inabilities and mistakes, Hoccleve securely connects himself to Chaucer’s name as well as Chaucer’s fame, which was beginning to flourish around the time the Regement was written. But, as Johnston notes, “by declar-

 Ibid., p. 253.  Ibid., p. 261. Johnston ascribes the same intention, that of presenting Chaucer as a clerk rather than a courtier, to the Ellesmere manuscript. It is, of course, probable and commonly assumed by scholars, that the Chaucer portraits in Ellesmere and Harley 4866 are related in some way. See, for example, Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: a Critical Biography, pp. 285 – 307; Rickert, Painting in Britain: the Middle Ages; Seymour, “Manuscript Portraits of Chaucer and Hoccleve.”  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 261 [highlights in the original].  Ibid., p. 275.

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ing Death to have been too hasty in tearing away Chaucer, Hoccleve does not only create the chronology necessary for discipleship, he also banishes his master to the realm of the well-and-truly dead.”¹⁸³ By including a picture of him as an aid for those who seem to have forgotten about this truly special poet, Hoccleve not only creates a strong bond between himself and Chaucer, but he at the same time situates his master in a past that necessarily needs to give way for a present and future. While Chaucer is portrayed as a clerkly and orthodox, almost old-fashioned but definitely old man, the picture painted of Hoccleve shows a different poet. Even though the two versions of the presentation picture display differences, they both clearly set Hoccleve apart from Chaucer. Chaucer’s age is clearly marked not only in the text which emphasises his death and thus at least hints at his old age, but much more obvious in the painting which shows him with white hair, a white beard and the stature of an older, well-off and stately man. Hoccleve, in comparison, is young in both images. The difference in age is of course exaggerated, as Hoccleve the intra-textual author is depicted as being much younger than the actual Hoccleve would have been at the time of the Regement’s creation. But the effect of his young years is that both pictures grant him the time to shape his own future and possibly rise to even higher social levels. Chaucer the old man, and especially Chaucer the dead man, has no such future ahead of him. His bitter fate, the picture seems to imply, is to eternally point at text, always a few millimetres short of reaching it. The two men’s clothes underline their age division: while Chaucer wears a very simple black gown with a matching cap, Hoccleve sports a more youthful gown in a much livelier colour (red and pink respectively). In Arundel 38 especially, this gown is in the spotlight as Hoccleve’s close-to-kneeling posture produces elegant folds and his gown underlines his action wonderfully. This difference in clothing and appearance situates the two poets in two contexts which could not differ more. While Hoccleve appears as a vibrant courtier, Chaucer’s first impression is that of an old and old-fashioned person. These contexts are consolidated further once we take into account the layout of both pictures. While Chaucer is firmly and statically set into a box (and even the free-standing figure in Royal 17 D. vi is a static one) in the manuscripts’ margins, Hoccleve is depicted in the centre of the manuscript page, and as a dynamic man, not only in his pose, but also in terms of social mobility. Not only is he able to kneel in an athletic and dynamic way, he also – and possibly because of this elegant athleticism – manages to climb the social ladder. In comparison, Chaucer can go nowhere. His stasis is further emphasised as his only movement, his pointing finger

 Ibid., p. 281.

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and his arm which breaks out of the frame are directed at text. His only possibility to interact, thus, is to interact with text from the manuscripts’ sidelines, and not even with his own text, but another poet’s text. Even though he is praised as the “universel fadir in science”¹⁸⁴ who has written quite a bit of didactic literature himself,¹⁸⁵ the success of his literature is not connected with courtly spheres. Instead, his role as clerk, teacher and counsellor is emphasised, as is his role as tale-teller. It is especially his pointing hand that connects him with oral culture, adding yet another tinge of archaism to his person. The pointing hand, at the same time, emphasises how much the control over the Chaucer-figure lies with Thomas Hoccleve himself, who lent his maistir the only instrument of control Chaucer possesses in this portrait: the pointing hand. Hoccleve, on the other hand, interacts with Prince Henry, the future king. And this interaction is depicted as a mutual one. Not only does Hoccleve offer the book, but Prince Henry accepts it. This pictural moment in which the prince accepts the volume makes the depicted book a successful one, and it makes its author a successful social climber. But the visualization of this moment of success is firmly linked to a culture of explicitly written literature instead of the oral poetry Chaucer is still associated with. First, this is expressed in the presentation pictures which lack the references to orality that we find in the Chaucer portrait. And second, the Regement itself, too, emphasises its own writtenness. Both in the prologue and in the beginning of the main part, the narrator repeatedly tells us about the writing process. And third, the Regement’s addressee, Prince Henry, is firmly set in a culture of literacy and reading when in the words of the compiler to the prince, the narrator talks about his sources and says: “I am seur that tho bookes alle three / Red hath and seen your innat sapience”.¹⁸⁶ The manuscripts of the Regement of Princes thus offer a plethora of images that hold semantic potential, especially when seen in interplay with the text. Next to a number of smaller images, it is especially the two larger pictures that deserve our attention. In this chapter I have shown that the Chaucer portrait does not only enter into a dialogue with the corresponding text – a dialogue that is greatly influenced by the manuscript situation –, but that the portrait at the same time presents the reader with a particular image of Chaucer. The poet, I have argued, is depicted in a clerkly fashion, and this depiction is opposed to the presentation of the narrator, who is depicted as a courtly author, at the verge of becoming part of Prince Henry’s inner circle. As the presentation pic-

 Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 1964.  He “[h]ath seid, in cas semblable, and othir mo”: ibid., l. 4979.  Ibid., ll. 2129 – 2130.

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ture(s) thus offer a counterpoint to the depiction of Chaucer, they extend Johnston’s idea of a “cultural programme”.

4.4 On Authorship The kind of self-representation as fictionalised authors studied in the preceding chapters has to be seen in the greater light of a changing late medieval and early modern authorial self-fashioning. While self-fashioning has been perceived and described as the central merit of early modern authors and as a key feature of their culture,¹⁸⁷ recent studies have shown that the development began much earlier than the 16th century. ¹⁸⁸ Guillemette Bolens’ and Lukas Erne’s collection of essays (2011) takes an important step towards breaking down the boundaries between the long-cemented early modern self-fashioning and an alleged medieval lack of a sense of authorship. Their collection shows that medieval models of authorship were a matter of constant reflection and negotiation in literary texts. Rather than speaking of “the” medieval conception of authorship, the volume draws a much more differentiated picture of multifaceted versions of the concept, which may additionally be subjected to change throughout an author’s oeuvre. One foundation for this development was laid by Alastair Minnis in his book on the Medieval Theory of Authorship (1988). He examines how medieval writers conceived of and categorized the classical authors from whom they drew their material and authorization. One of the most important changes in terms of how writers were perceived and perceived themselves, according to Minnis, happened during the 12th and the 13th centuries: “Twelfth-century exegetes were interested in the auctor mainly as a source of [Godly, EK] authority. But in the thir-

 This position is, of course, best exemplified and summarized in Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980).  A number of studies break down the boundaries between medieval and early modern conceptions of authorship, employing the same terminology and theoretical frames to authors from both periods. One example is Wolfram Keller, who discusses how both Lydgate and Shakespeare construct models of ’counter-authorship’ in order to set themselves apart from their literary and authorial predecessors: Wolfram R. Keller, “Shakespearean Medievalism: Conceptions of Literary Authorship in Richard II and John Lydgate’s Troy Book,” European Journal of English Studies 15:2 (2011), pp. 129 – 142. The model of counter-authorship was originally proposed as a fruitful approach to Shakespearean authorship by Patrick Cheney in his 2008 monograph: Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

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teenth century, a new type of exegesis emerged, in which the focus had shifted from the divine auctor to the human auctor of Scripture.”¹⁸⁹ Bolens and Erne as well as other editors and authors of recent studies see the Ricardian and early Lancastrian eras, and especially Chaucer, as the point at which a changing attitude to authorial construction and perception starts being traceable. Tim William Machan discusses how Chaucer uses classical authors and sources to legitimize his own literary works, but how at the same time “his self-conscious confrontation of these writers and texts bespeak an awareness of the complex and potentially problematic nature of concepts like textual authority and authorship.”¹⁹⁰ What exactly it is that changes with Chaucer, is a matter of vivid discussion. Those positions and attempts at defining this new development that are important to my own discussion will be summarized briefly. Stephanie Trigg poses three models of authorship available to Chaucer and shows how they all apply to his texts to differing degrees. But it is the third and chronologically youngest model of authorship that is of special interest here. Termed “author” (in contrast to “poet” and “writer”), this concept of authorship creates “an emergent literary history into which poets can proleptically insert their own posterity and reputation as they anticipate their own reception.”¹⁹¹ Inserting one’s own posterity might take the form of authors writing their own names into their texts. Helen Cooper describes how intertextual references in Old English literature mostly worked through naming the texts rather than naming the poet – “It is the stories, not the authors, that were known”¹⁹² –, and how this changed into a “new status carried by the named poets of the Ricardian age.”¹⁹³ In the case of Chaucer, this self-naming happens twice, once in the House of Fame and once in the “Man of Law’s Prologue”.¹⁹⁴ In the House of Fame, the Eagle addresses the speaker as “Geffrey”¹⁹⁵ and the Man of Law,

 Minnis 1988, p. 5 [emphases in the original].  Tim William Machan, “Textual Authority and the Works of Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Henryson,” Viator 23 (1992): p. 281.  Stephanie Trigg, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), p. 53.  Helen Cooper, “Choosing Poetic Fathers: The English Problem,” in Medieval and Early Modern Authorship, ed. by Guillemette Bolens and Lukas Erne (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2011), p. 35.  Ead.  Trigg, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern, p. 62. It is, of course, significant, as Robert Meyer-Lee shows, that Chaucer does not explicitly name himself, but has the Host deliver a less than flattering description of the Tales’ narrator, see footnote 198 below.  Chaucer, “The House of Fame”, l. 729.

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when talking about his way of telling a story, compares himself to “Chaucer”.¹⁹⁶ It is a third passage in the Chaucerian oeuvre, however, that is particularly interesting when it comes to self-naming, as Robert Meyer-Lee shows: after the “Prioress’s Tale” and in the Prologue to Sir Thopas’s story, the Host asks the narrator “What man artow?”¹⁹⁷ Instead of giving a straightforward answer, like the one suggested by Meyer-Lee – “I am Chaucer, clerk of the kinges works”¹⁹⁸ – the narrator does not answer at all. Instead, the Host renders a famous description of the narrator, calling him a “popet” and “elvyssh”.¹⁹⁹ The text leaves this obvious opportunity of self-naming unused, but not without having first pointed the readers’ attention to the opportunity. In a typically Chaucerian move, the narrator “introduces this possibility only to sidestep it”.²⁰⁰ The effect is ambiguous: on the one hand, the connection between the narrator and the historical author Chaucer established earlier in the Tales – the “Man of Law’s Prologue” precedes the “Prioress’s Tale” – is refreshed, but then, on the other hand, it remains empty of particularity. This Chaucerian moment of self-naming and the ensuing description by the Host “individualizes the speaker, but it does not invoke his historical specificity.”²⁰¹ But other authors, too, use the strategy of self-naming. As discussed above, both Gower and Lydgate have their narrators name themselves: In the prologue to The Siege of Thebes, the Host welcomes the pilgrim narrator into the group and enquires after his name and place of residence. The narrator recounts his answer: “I answerde / ‘my name was Lydgate, Monk of Bery / nyȝ fyfty ȝere of age, Come to this toune / to do my pilgrimage, As I haue hight / I haue thereof no shame.’

And to stress this explicit self-reference, the EETS-edition records a marginal gloss next to this stanza which repeat the central points: “Lydgate” and “monk of Bery”²⁰² Similarly, at the end of this Troy Book, Lydgate, in a conven-

 Chaucer, Introduction to “The Man of Law’s Tale”, ll. 46 – 50.  Chaucer, “Prologue to Sir Thopas”, l. 695.  Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt, p. 33.  Chaucer, “Prologue to Sir Thopas”, ll. 701– 703.  Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt, p. 33.  Ibid., p. 34.  John Lydgate, Siege of Thebes, edited from all the known manuscripts and the two oldest editions, with introduction, notes, and a glossary, ed. by Axel Erdmann, for the Early English Text Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, repr. 1960), ll. 92– 95.

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tional move of humilty, begs forgiveness for his lack of style and his simple mind and tells his readers that he is “called Iohn Lydgate, / Monke of Burie be professioun”²⁰³ John Gower, in a similar way, names himself in the last of the eight books of the Confessio Amantis. And of course, the Regement’s narrator and intra-textual author comes to mind immediately; when asked by the Old Man in the prologue what his name is, he answers: “Hoccleve, fadir min, men clepen me”.²⁰⁴ What is special about Hoccleve’s method of self-naming, however, is that he goes beyond mentioning his name and his profession. Instead, he offers such rich and detailed descriptions of his professional life as a clerk and of the material conditions of his daily routines, that his life becomes tangible to a much higher degree than in the texts of Gower, Lydgate, and Chaucer. The very personal woes and worries – down to his mental state in the Series – that the narrator Hoccleve repeatedly refers to create a persona that is much rounder than the other narrators that lend themselves for comparison. The strong connection between the narrator’s life and that of his text that was the subject of Chapter 2 in this book adds yet another level of complexity to the matter: while other narrators, like the one in Gower’s Confessio, do describe the production of the text in some detail, it seems special how interwoven the Regement’s life and that of its narrator-author are. Inserting one’s own authorial identity does not stop at self-naming, however. In addition, authors name their literary role models and predecessors and thus inscribe themselves into a literary tradition. This phenomenon, too, strongly revolves around Chaucer, who is evoked as the father of English poetry and the founder of English literature in a great number of texts. Again, as I have shown above, the Regement offers a number of examples. Both Gower and Chaucer are explicitly mentioned as literary forebears. Chaucer gets the most and highest praise, however. He is called “maistir” and “fadir”. Helen Cooper states that invoking a poetic predecessor in this way is a way for medieval authors to “create the kind of reader receptivity they want, whether or not the invocation is strictly accurate.”²⁰⁵ The Regement has an especially cunning way of establishing this connection between the implied author Thomas Hoccleve and his poetic father Geoffrey Chaucer: instead of outright claiming this connection for himself, the narrator only mentions Chaucer when his interlocutor, the Old Man, asks him if he is not a friend of the great poet. Thomas Hoccleve, the narrator persona thus does not need to seem immodest, but the text can still estab John Lydgate, Lydgate’s Troy Book, ed. by Henry Bergen for the Early English Text Society (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner 1908), ll. 3468 – 3469.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, l. 1864.  Cooper, “Choosing Poetic Fathers”, p. 29.

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lish this connection by making another literary figure mention it. And on a superficial level, the Chaucer portrait in the manuscripts of the Regement can, of course, be read as a way of “naming” Hoccleve’s maistir. Authors putting themselves into relation with their literary predecessors is quite a complex phenomenon and goes beyond mentioning their names, however. Praising their abilities, naming their texts, establishing a bond by recounting shared memories are other strategies that we find in late medieval literature, including the Regement. And vice versa we find out that naming a poetic father can do more than just align an author with a literary lineage. Just how much more complex it can be in function is examined by Nicholas Watson in his article called “Outdoing Chaucer”. He studies Lydgate’s and Henryson’s Troy stories (Lydgate’s Troy Book and Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid) and comes to the conclusion that they “treat Chaucer not only as source, but also as challenge, a powerful and even threatening figure, some of whose authority they must annex as a vital part of their self-invention as poets.”²⁰⁶ Larry Scanlon and James Simpson’s introduction to their edited volume ties in with this argument. They, too, observe how Lydgate’s works at the same time draw on Chaucer and reject his works “with newly emergent authority and, thanks primarily to Lydgate’s praise and use of Chaucer, an emergent sense of its own poetic tradition.”²⁰⁷ In his article entiteled “Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal”, Robert R. Edwards describes a similar phenomenon, albeit in different terms. He proposes the terms “imitation” and “refusal” as fruitful for a description of the phenomenon and shows how authors of vernacular texts “at once imitate the auctores and refuse their authority.”²⁰⁸ Using Gower’s oeuvre as an example, Edwards shows how Gower’s texts openly address the imitation of classical material by naming old authors and their texts and by describing the process of writing “of newe som matiere, / Essampled of these olde wyse”.²⁰⁹ At the same time,

 Nicolas Watson, “Outdoing Chaucer: Lydgate’s Troy Book and Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid as Competitive Imitations of Troilus and Criseyde,” in Shifts and Transpositions in Medieval Narrative: A Festschrift for Dr. Elspeth Kennedy, ed. by Karen Pratt (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), p. 91.  Scanlon and Simpson, “Introduction,” in John Lydgate: Poetry, Culture, and Lancastrian England, ed. by Larry Scanlon and James Simpson (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), p. 8.  Robert R. Edwards, “Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal in Late-Medieval England,” in Medieval and Early Modern Authorship, ed. by Guillemette Bolens and Lukas Erne (Tübingen: Narr Francke Attempto Verlag, 2011), p. 69.  Gower, The English Works of John Gower, ll. 6 – 7, discussed in more detail in Edwards, “Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal,” p. 61.

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however, Edwards discusses how the Confessio Amantis ends with the narratorauthor being sent away from Venus’s court, and implicitly from the Confessio, and is told to return to his moral texts. Edwards reads this as Gower having reached the age of retirement from his occupation as author of the Confessio. ²¹⁰ Additional ways of refusal are identified in the works of Chaucer. Edwards shows how multi-faceted conceptions of authorship are in late medieval vernacular literature and how these conceptions move within a spectrum of imitation of canonical models on the one and the subversion of these models on the other hand. This, I argue, also happens in the Regement, where both Chaucer and Gower are invoked as predecessors. But in fact, the Regement goes beyond naming and praising its role-models. With the two author portraits, Hoccleve visually aligns himself with the literary tradition established by Chaucer, but at the same time he goes beyond simply showing, in the sense of “naming”, Chaucer. Instead, the Chaucer portrait, as I explained above, can be understood as a visualisation of the “challenge” Watson mentioned, and Chaucer as the “powerful” but “threatening” figure, so threatening that he has to be depicted as old-fashioned and caged in a frame. As we see, fictionalisation of authorship and the interplay of a narrator-persona with an authorial self-fashioning can be traced throughout much of 15thcentury literature. While the mere existence of this phenomenon is no surprise to scholars any more, just how diversely it was employed may be a field worth more extensive study: exactly how writers fashioned their own authorship and to which uses it was put is a fascinating phenomenon. Not only do different authors show different ways of fashioning their own authorship, but this fashioning can change within a writer’s oeuvre as well. Keeping in mind that the fashioning of authorship has a distinctive performative aspect to it, this does not come as a surprise: Judith Butler has shown us how identities are formed through repetition. Accordingly, Edwards observes that Gower’s “poetic career reflects not just an awareness of authorial conventions and borrowings but a sustained and continually renewed performance of authorship.”²¹¹ Hoccleve’s authorship moves within a wider frame of self-naming and increased exploitation of modes of authorship with an author’s texts. Two interdependent concepts introduced by Robert Meyer-Lee make it possible to further profile his strategic use of his own authorial conception. In his monograph on laureate poetics, Meyer-Lee distinguishes two modes of authorial self-represen-

 Edwards, “Authorship, Imitation, and Refusal,” pp. 62– 63.  Ibid., 57 [highlights are my own].

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tation, both of which influence each other, and both of which are influenced by the political developments of the late 14th and early 15th centuries: Laureate selfconstruction on the one hand, and the beggar poet on the other. In 1399, Henry IV deposed of King Richard in a somewhat questionable manner and thus began a line of Lancastrian kings who partly had to rely on poets to legitimize and stabilize their claim to the throne: “Unlike any previous post-Conquest English kings, Lancastrian monarchs all fostered explicit relations with poets writing in English, prime among whom was Lydgate.”²¹² Robert Meyer-Lee shows that it is Lydgate much more than Spenser who deserves the title of England’s first laureate poet.²¹³ The two concepts, the laureate vs. the beggar poet, are defined thus: “The laureate signifies a positive, mutually affirming (if, in theory, arm’slength) relation to power, while the beggar stands as an expression of the actual conditions of subjection, and consequent will to resistance, that the practice of laureate poetics inevitably involves.”²¹⁴ In other words, while the laureate poet supports his patron in his aimed-at political legitimation, Meyer-Lee ascribes a more ambivalent role to the beggar poet, who is aware of his status as an instrument of power and, due to his dependence on the patron, has a more ambivalent, at times subversive and rebelling attitude.²¹⁵ While the laureate poet “imagines poetry to possess an autonomous authority in service to the prince but not subservient to him, the beggar reveals the utter dependence that structures actual poetic practice.”²¹⁶ This dependence becomes clear in the case of Thomas Hoccleve, whose narrator-persona repeatedly emphasises his subjection to the Prince. The description of his financial worries, his pronounced hope of being relieved by Prince Henry are made explicit repeatedly throughout the text. As a beggar poet, Hoccleve must necessarily subject himself to the power of his (potential) patron Prince Henry, and the text leaves no doubt about this subjection. The images discussed above contain aspects that tie in with this petitionary role: the author kneeling down, offering his book, the depiction of the author as much shorter and, within the framework of religious iconography, less important and powerful in the case of Royal 17.D.vi. But, as Meyer-Lee shows, the two categories cannot be separated, as one mode inevitably evokes the other: “Fifteenth-century sovereigns, by demanding, in effect, that their poets be laureates, also demanded that

    

Scanlon and Simpson, “Introduction” p. 7. Meyer-Lee, “Lydgate’s Laureate Pose,” p. 36. Meyer-Lee, Poets and Power from Chaucer to Wyatt, p. 4. Ibid. Ibid.

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they be beggars.”²¹⁷ What is more, both modes of self-representation “involve strategic conflation of poetic subject positions – that is, in either case the poet appears as his concrete extraliterary self.”²¹⁸ In Hoccleve’s case, laureate authorship plays an important role as a foil against which his status as a beggar-poet is played out. The presentation pictures in Royal 17.D.vi and especially in Arundel 38 depict the intra-textual author Thomas Hoccleve in a way that suggests a close relation to Prince Henry. But still, Hoccleve cannot be called a laureate poet in the way this label is stuck on Lydgate or, later, Spenser. Quite the opposite, Meyer-Lee argues that Hoccleve’s attempts to become a laureate poet were frustrated and this failure influenced the image he constructed of his own authorship: he “relinquishes the official, quasi-transcendental authority of the laureate and puts into its place a fragmented selfhood of frustrated and stubbornly persistent desire.”²¹⁹ The empirical Hoccleve’s failure to become the Lancastrian laureate poet likewise influences his status as a writer of begging poems: because he is not the laureate poet, his work is not commissioned, and because he has never written a Fürstenspiegel, he has no authority in the field of didactic literature. MeyerLee argues that in this situation Hoccleve draws his authority from his own life, i. e. his poverty, his daily routines at the Privy Seal Office, in short: his biography.²²⁰ The autobiographic narrative thus plays an important role in MeyerLee’s argument: it serves the purpose of legitimising Hoccleve’s writing. Regarding Hoccleve’s autobiographical narratives as literary strategies, as fictions of his life, we should consider how they relate to other concepts that try to grasp the fictionalisation of authorship. Patrick Cheney’s model of counter-authorship focuses on how visible authors become in their texts, or, rather, how openly they communicate authorial images. Cheney claims that Shakespeare is “the first major author in the Western tradition who conspicuously avoids presenting himself”, a concept that is called “counter-authorship” and that “allows the author to hide behind the veil of his fictions”.²²¹ Cheney connects this process of hiding to Chaucer, who acted as a role model for Shakespeare and whose authorial activity in the Parlement of Foules Cheney calls “self-effacement”.²²²

     

Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., p. 89. Ibid., pp. 108 – 109. Cheney, Shakespeare’s Literary Authorship, p. 14. Ibid., p. 113.

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The Regement with its narrator persona that doubles as an intra-textual author and as an alias for the historical author Thomas Hoccleve follows a different strategy than that Cheney ascribes to Shakespeare’s counter-authorship. Rather than a historical author hiding behind his literary figures, I believe, the narrator Hoccleve is a means of pointing attention to the historical author, but not in a straightforward, but rather in an intricate and playful way. A comparable example is the Confessio Amantis, which states that its author “pretends” to be the narrator Amans (“fingens se auctor esse Amantem”²²³), and later names this narrator/intra-textual author John Gower, the text consciously establishes parallels between the historical author Gower and an intra-textual author Gower who also acts as the narrator and whose authorship is a constant matter of description and discussion throughout the text. Claiming that counter-authorship cannot be applied to medieval literature in general would be too simple and it would not do the intricate way of fictionalisation in the Regement justice, because it would mean falling into the trap of autobiographical fallacy that Kane has pointed out.²²⁴ I hope to have shown that the Regement of Princes does not simply set narrator and historical author into one, but that the fictionalisation of authorship is marked as exactly that: a fiction. Rather than “hiding behind his fictions” or “self-effacing” himself, the Regement’s narrator becomes visible, almost comes to life through his fictions, but at the same times shows that his own narrative of authorship is just as much a construct as is the conception of authorship he ascribes to Geoffrey Chaucer both in his text and his images. What is more, the Regement shows that conceptualising authorship need not be limited to one concept, but that different writers conceived of their own activity differently. Medieval authorship and its expressions, Hoccleve’s texts show, are tightly interwoven with political contexts, genre distinctions, as well as the literary landscapes they are produced in.

 Gower, The English Works of John Gower, Book I, gloss next to l. 59 ff. The translation is my own.  George Kane, “The Autobiographical Fallacy in Chaucer and Langland Studies (1965),” pp. 1– 15.

5 Conclusions Throughout this study I have read the Regement of Princes as a text that is not only set in a manuscript culture as described by the Material Philology, but as a text that has this manuscript culture inscribed into it and expresses it in a performative way. In the second chapter, I have studied the autobiographical narrative that has been subject to scholarly scrutiny before. Early readings of these autobiographical elements equalled the narrator Thomas Hoccleve’s life with that of the empirical author Thomas Hoccleve. Especially historians have long seen the Regement of Princes as well as other Hocclevean texts as a textual treasure trove for their studies on the Privy Seal Office, on London scribes employed in the infrastructure of literary production, and on Hoccleve’s life itself. This study has drawn a clear separation between the historical figure and the narrator persona. The life laid out in the Regement, I have argued, gives access to and conjures up a second biography, that of the text itself. Both biographies, that of the narrator and that of the Regement, are interwoven in a complex way. The text’s past is evoked through the descriptions of the narrator sitting down to prepare the writing process and plan the text’s content. The present is manifested again and again, one could say: eternally, at the break between prologue and main part, in which the narrator begins to write the Regement proper and addresses the prince. And its future is foreshadowed in the detailed descriptions of the narrator’s daily work as a scribe as well as the bodily problems caused by his scribal work. Part of this biographical fabric is the Old Man, who fills gaps in the narrator’s biography by offering a youth that is only hinted at by Hoccleve. But at the same time, the Old Man can be seen as a personification of the text in its potential future state: his tattered looks should not deceive readers about its pure content and good intentions. Similarly, the text’s future appearance, be it through cheap binding and used covers or through bad copying, should not make readers believe that the content and the message are not full of “vertu”. In the course of the prologue and at the beginning of the Regement proper, the narrator and his life recede and lose in significance, while the dimension of the text’s biography becomes more and more apparent and gains in shape and importance. Ultimately, the narrator wishes for his death in a way that makes it an almost inevitable fact. Correspondingly, the text seems to steer towards change or, in a Lachmannian mindset, corruption and decay. But it is at this point where the Old Man seems to save the text from decay: with his separation of outer appearance vs. inner values, the text’s inner qualities may remain untouched by its change in appearance or form. DOI 10.1515/9783110523089-005

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The third chapter took into focus two sections from the Regement proper and subjected them to close readings that both revolved around the keyword of ‘authority’ as well as the process of glosinge. In the first case study, glosinge was studied as the process of supplementing a vernacular main text with Latin marginal glosses. The glossing apparatus is more flexible than the main text, both spatially and in terms of its survival as part of the Regement as a whole. As a result, they enter into all kinds of ambiguous relations with the main text. Spatially, they are flexible and may be moved around on the manuscript folio (as well as the edited printed page), ending up in a position where glosses and main text do not seem to fit spatially any more. Stylistically, glosses and main text may diverge from each other, with one recounting events much more dramatically and realistically than the other. And content-wise, too, the relation between glosses and main text can be everything but clear. In fact, readers are often faced with glosses that do not quite seem to fit the main text, for one of these reasons, several, or all. The spatial constraints of the manuscript context seem to be mirrored by textual incongruences. To encounter such a high level of openness and ambiguity in a text that, based on its didactic function, should not leave any room for doubt and interpretational possibilities seems to undermine the Regement’s reliability as a representative of the Fürstenspiegel-genre. The second case study in this chapter seems to support this impression. Here, I have examined processes of glosinge in the second sense: as the interpretation of quotes from authoritative sources. The debate on female maistrie from the Regement’s chapter on peace contains a quasi-academic discussion in which the narrator argues in favour of the superiority of women, at the same time listing possible counter-arguments, only to then refute them. In the process of this debate, and with a clear reference to Chaucer’s Wife of Bath Alisoun and her exegetical practice, the narrator interprets quotes in a way that shows how freely sources can be twisted and turned and employed to support different sides of a discussion. I have argued that this practice of twisting quotes and interpreting according to one’s particular needs can be seen as continuing the relation of marginal glosses and main text. This relation, as I have shown in the first part of this third chapter, can be full of tension because a manuscript does not offer enough space, but it can also be moved to the textual level on which stylistic differences make a clear interpretation of text-cum-gloss difficult. The debate on female maistrie continues these observations and takes them to a much more general level: Rather than looking at single marginal glosses and how they can be related to the main text, the narrator’s prodecure in this debate concerns the interpretation of all texts. As I have shown, this has serious consequences for the Regement’s reliability as a Fürstenspiegel. But not only does the text undermine its own counselling function by demonstrating its emptiness. The

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narrator, too, cuts a bad figure as he openly changes sides during the discussion because he is afraid of women’s reaction, should they find out that he supported the opposing position at the debate’s outset. Both the counsel text and the counsellor conveying this text lose their reliability. Or in other words: the text’s debate with its particular way of employing sources and quotes is paralleled by the narrator who shows how the strategies of exegesis can be performed. Narrator and text seem to fall into one, as their biographies, but also their level of reliability, or to be more precise: their loss of reliability, overlap. Chapter 4 has shown that the relation between text and image in medieval manuscripts is a semantically significant one. This was well-known to medieval authors, scribes, illuminators and other artisans, who employed these relations for different purposes. The example of the two textual construction workers shows that images were used to reflect the manuscript context and the characteristic features that came with it: openness, variance, the collaboration of artists in a longer succession of production steps, etc. But not only do images reflect the manuscript context in which they can be found, the manuscript context also affects the images themselves, their transmission and hence our perception of their expressive potential. This becomes most clear once the three versions of the Chaucer portrait are compared. While the portraits themselves only display minor differences – some of which had major consequences for the text-image relation, however, – it was their spatial relation to the text that was most affected by the manuscript context and that, in turn, affected our reading. As a result, Chaucer’s pointing hand(s) direct(s) the readers’ attention to different lines of the text, and this leads to different interpretations. The results concerning the Chaucer portrait as well as the presentation picture have shown that the manuscript situation must be taken into consideration methodologically when studying how medieval texts and accompanying images relate. The two concepts of authorship as expressed in the Chaucer portraits and in the two presentation pictures were the third focus of Chapter 4. It has been shown that a juxtaposition of these two concepts is employed to literary-political ends. Based on Andrew James Johnston’s assumption that the Chaucer portrait in Harley 4866 was part of a cultural programme devised by Hoccleve to align Chaucer with his own clerkly origins and occupation (in contrast to the courtly Chaucer depicted in the Troilus-frontispiece), I have argued that Hoccleve’s own portrait can be seen as an extension to this programme, and a counter-model to the kind of authorship embodied in the image of Chaucer. Even though the two presentation pictures differ in their depiction of the relationship between Prince Henry and Thomas Hoccleve, they both depict the intra-textual author as someone who is about to become part of Prince Henry’s court. This may seem ironic at first, because the prologue so firmly locates the narrator within the scribal /

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clerkly spheres of the Westminster administration. So scholars like Spearing rightly state that “[t]he Hocclevian subject in the Regement is above all clerkly.”¹ Especially the image in Arundel 38 shows us a young and elegant courtier Hoccleve who stands in stark contrast to the old-fashioned and clerkly Chaucer as we find him in Harley 4866, for example. This extends Johnston’s idea even further into the realm of the literary-political. As he remarks: “When Hoccleve entered the scene of English Literature he was not operating in the realm of semi-private coterie poetry as Chaucer had done before him.”² And indeed, Hoccleve’s starting point as a civil servant who seemed to have been in ever-lasting financial straits, was much less favourable than Chaucer’s position closer to the epicentre of power and courtliness. And as far as we can reconstruct Hoccleve’s life from the documents regarding his pending annuities and payments, he never managed to rise as swiftly in courtly society as Chaucer did. Examining the presentation pictures in front of this background, the images’ ficticious character becomes even more powerful and the link to the autobiographical fiction in the Regement’s prologue becomes even stronger. If we see the autobiographical detail of the Regement’s prologue as a fictional account of a poor clerk’s life and financial worries, we can conceive of the depiction of the Regement’s presentation in a similar way: a fiction of a presentation. After all, scholars are still not sure which manuscript was the presentation copy for Prince Henry, whether such a presentation copy has ever existed, and if so, if a presentation as the one depicted ever took place. So just as the Chaucer portrait is not a picture of what the poet really looked like, the presentation scene is no account of a historical event. This does not make it a less powerful image, however. It can be understood as a fiction of a poet who strives to present himself as much more suitable, in comparison to his role model Chaucer, to be made part of the courtly group around Prince Henry. And that such an elaborate and large image of the author is included in a work in the first place is significant, too. It ties in with what Sarah Tolmie sees as the starting point of her study: “Hoccleve’s mission was to create the secular poet, himself, as a professional subject and to figure him explicitly into the economy of representation.”³ In a similar way, I have argued that Hoccleve creates an image of himself as an author who is successful at court. Just like the autobiographical detail in the prologue explains why Hoccleve should be rewarded for writing his book, the presentation pictures show how he should be received: like an admiring donor of a great gift in Royal 17 D. vi,  Spearing, Medieval Autographies: The “I” of the Text, p. 161.  Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 272.  Tolmie, “The Professional: Thomas Hoccleve,” p. 342.

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and like a courtier of equal rank in Arundel 38. When Johnston claims that with the encomium and, more importantly, the portrait, Hoccleve “banishes his master to the realm of the well-and-truly dead”,⁴ he certainly is right. But with Chaucer’s portrait and by combining it with the presentation picture, Hoccleve makes sure that he not only aligns himself with Chaucer’s fame in a first step, hammers the last nail into his coffin in a second, but in a third step also presents a worthy, if not even better, successor to take Chaucer’s place. This has been observed on a textual level by John Bowers who maintains that the encomium bemoaning Chaucer’s death and his refusal to bequeath his wisdom on his deathbed “served to dramatize Hoccleve’s legitimacy as heir, according to the social logic that the one who grieves is the one with the right to inherit.”⁵ I have argued in this chapter that this literary power struggle of succession does not only happen on a textual level, but is also expressed visually. Lee Patterson maintains that Hoccleve’s works try to answer the basic yet central question “What is me?”⁶ rather than using his highly individualised note for a particular purpose. According to Patterson, the anonymity and liveliness of medieval London, a place so different from Hoccleve’s presumed hometown, rural Hockliffe in Bedfordshire, lead to the poems’ recurring discussion of isolation, insecurity, and to the underlying question of identity and individuality.⁷ While Patterson reads Hoccleve’s texts as striving to negotiate his role in this urban society and safeguarding his own identity by putting himself into relation to the lives and identities of those around him, I believe that questions of identity are discussed as being inextricably bound to the text’s existence. In the course of the Regement, the text’s biography is not only created through the descriptions of the narrator’s life. Vice versa, his life gains in significance, because the text gives him the chance to live on, similar to Chaucer, who survives in his “bookes of his ornat endytyng / That is to al this land enlumynyng.”⁸ At the same time, the book adds a level of materiality to the descriptions of the narrator’s biography. This does not only refer to the accounts of the writing process as well as the scribal labour, but also to the visualisations of these accounts. Here again, Patterson’s study of Hoccleve’s identity comes into focus: While most scholars

 Johnston, Clerks and Courtiers: Chaucer, Late Middle English Literature and the State Formation Process, p. 281.  John M. Bowers, “Thomas Hoccleve and the Politics of Tradition,” The Chaucer Review 36:4 (2002): p. 352.  Hoccleve, My Compleinte and Other Poems, p. 75, l. 393, quoted and discussed in Patterson, “”What is me?”: Hoccleve and the Trials of the Urban Self.”  Patterson, “”What is me?”: Hoccleve and the Trials of the Urban Self,” esp. p. 108.  Hoccleve, The Regiment of Princes, ll. 1973 – 1974.

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argue that Chaucer is instrumentalised as a means of authorial self-fashioning, as a way for Hoccleve to present himself as a successor to the dead Chaucer, Patterson adds a different reading. For him, the Chaucer portrait serves “as an instance of a particular person whose bodily selfhood, with its inimitable appearance and manner, carries a power that surpasses the conventional formulas of praise.”⁹ In other words: Hoccleve not only had the Chaucer portrait included because he wanted to place himself in a tradition of late medieval authorship, but also because in his search for a “bodily selfhood”, Chaucer offered a background against which Hoccleve could position himself. To this very persuasive reading I would add that Chaucer’s corporeality in his portrait is extended through the second authorial portrait, the one depicting Hoccleve himself. The pictorial programme that uses Chaucer’s portrait as a starting point introduces a different concept of authorship in the narrator’s portrait / presentation picture. But not only is the narrator’s body presented as flexible and unbound by limiting frames. In addition, next to the bodies of prince and narrator we find a third “body” in this image: the book, which enables the narrator to present himself as the elegant courtly author he aspires to be. My discussions have ultimately lead to and revolved around the narrator-persona: I have shown how narrator and text overlap and share many functions and modes of description. In a second step, I have demonstrated how the text as an entity does not offer itself for a clear and simple interpretation, but is always open to interpretations into all kinds of directions. Again, it has become clear how text and narrator share this openness and unreliability. And in Chapter 4, I have identified the presentation picture as associating the narrator with an author concept that presents him in a very positive light. Recurrently, this persona shares something with the text he is a part of: his life facilitates the text’s biography, his lack of reliability in the debate on female superiority is also performed on a textual level, and his depiction as a courtly author features his text in a central position and creates the impression that without this text, such a close connection to Prince Henry would not have been possible. But still, the narrator is never quite graspable, not only when it comes to his age, but also his self-perception as an author and a counsellor. The descriptions of his life and his depiction in the presentation picture do not quite seem to match. On the one hand, the text describes him as desperate and in need of help. He is not very confident about his abilities as an author. And indeed, his text, the Regement proper, is repeatedly presented as failing to fulfil its purpose, when, for example, main text and glosses do not correspond, and when authoritative quotes can be shaped

 Patterson, “”What is me?”: Hoccleve and the Trials of the Urban Self,” p. 105.

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like authority’s waxen nose. This undermines the narrator’s role as a counsellor. But on the other hand, I have argued that the presentation picture presents the narrator in a very positive light, as an elegant young man who is on the verge of becoming a part of Prince Henry’s court. Can these two perspectives on Thomas Hoccleve be conciliated? We might argue, with Lee Patterson, that they are an expression of the narrator’s lack of direction, that they show his search for identity and his attempt to “fit the self into a coherent and unifying narrative that will provide Hoccleve with a sense of self-controlled direction.”¹⁰ While I do not discard Pattersons’s assumption that the narrator repeatedly discusses the question of identity, I still believe that the differences in his presentation are just too fundamental. The narrator’s depiction as a courtly and elegant successful author differs too much from his description as a desperate, ungifted and uninspired man in need of help. This lack of correspondence between textual and visual depiction ties in with my discussion. Rather than offering a pictorial image of the narrator that fits with the textual descriptions of him, the manuscripts of the Regement confront us with several versions of a narrator-figure. What is more, these versions even contradict each other. And ultimately they point to the fact that despite the very detailed descriptions of some aspects of his life, Thomas Hoccleve the narrator remains vague and not quite placable. So just like the text does not offer itself for a straightforward interpretation, neither does the narrator. He remains, through and through, closely linked to his text. It is not only the Regement as a text, then, that is shaped by the materiality inherent in the medium conveying it. The same holds true for the narrator persona. The followers of Material Philology maintain that the openness of the medieval manuscript culture makes it impossible to speak of the text. I hope to have shown that this openness is inscribed in and reflected by the Regement, which demonstrates impressively that it is impossible for this Fürstenspiegel to offer the interpretation, just like it is impossible for the narrator to be graspable as the Thomas Hoccleve.

 Ibid., p. 86.

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Images

Fig. 1: “‘Senec sayth’ catchwords” Digby 185 © The Bodleian Libraries, The University of Oxford, MS Digby 185, fol.135v

Fig. 2: “Man pulling up text”, c.1300, Book of Hours, W.102, fol. 33v © Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, CC BY 3.0

DOI 10.1515/9783110523089-007

Images

Fig. 3: “Monkey mock writing”, Missal illuminated by Petrus de Raimbeaucourt © Koninklijke Bibliotheek The Hague, KB 78 D 40, fol. 124r

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Images

Fig. 4: “Textual Construction Worker pulling text” © The British Library Board, MS Harley 4866, fol. 62r

Fig. 5: “Textual Construction Worker pulling text” © The British Library Board, MS Arundel 38, fol. 65r

Images

Fig. 6: “Chaucer Portrait” © The British Library Board, MS Harley 4866, fol. 88r

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202

Images

Fig. 7: “Chaucer Portrait” © The British Library Board, MS Royal 17 D.vi., fol. 93r

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Fig. 8: “Presentation Picture” © The British Library Board, MS Arundel 38, fol. 37r

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Fig. 9: “Presentation Picture” © The British Library Board, MS Royal 17 D.vi., fol. 40r

Indices Index of Names Alexander, Jonathan J. G.

4, 35, 128, 156 f.

Baras, Mose 161 Baswell, Christopher 63 f., 67 f., 94, 98 f. Batt, Catherine 90, 97, 103 Berges, Wilhelm 4 Blamires, Alcuin 98, 100 f. Blyth, Charles R. 1, 3, 7, 20, 58, 64, 72, 75, 77 f., 81, 83 f., 86, 92, 115, 122, 134 f. Boffey, Julia 7 Bolens, Guillemette 170 f. Bowers, John M. 13, 183 Boyd, David Lorenzo 3 Brewer, Derek 2, 9, 150 Brink, C. O. 35 Brosnahan, Leger 127 Brown, Michelle P. 115, 152 Brown, Peter 52, 140 f., 146 f. Bruns, Gerald. L. 11 Burrow, John A. 1 f., 8 f., 28 f., 31, 39, 107 Busby, Keith 14 Butler, Judith 18, 175 Butterfield, Ardis 15 f., 63, 84, 110 Caie, Graham D. 65, 75, 98 Camille, Michael 62, 64 f., 110, 113 f., 119– 121, 123–125, 148 f. Carlson, David R. 127, 139 Carruthers, Mary 68 Cerquiglini, Bernard 13 f., 16, 19, 108 Cessolis, Jacob de 4, 36, 71 Chartier, Roger 11 Chaucer, Geoffrey 5, 8 f., 15, 22–24, 26–28, 43, 45, 47–49, 52, 55, 65, 68, 84, 90, 100 f., 109, 115 f., 118, 124, 126–151, 155 f., 159, 162, 166–175, 177 f., 180–184 Cheney, Patrick 170, 177 f. Chinca, Mark 150 Classen, Albrecht 28, 30, 50 Coleman, Joyce 108, 115, 149 f., 152, 159 f., 163

Cooper, Helen 171, 173 Copeland, Rita 58 Courthope, W. J. 27 Crane, Susan 162 f. Curschmann, Michael 108, 110 Curtius, Ernst Robert 29 Dagenais, John 14 f. Davis, R. Evan 127 Dinshaw, Carolyn 89, 98, 100 Doyle, A. I. 8 Echard, Siân 14, 64, 74 f. Edwards, A. S. G. 7, 127, 135 Edwards, Robert R. 174 f. Ellis, Roger 11 f., 51, 65 Erne, Lukas 170 f. Ferster, Judith 3, 6, 10, 76, 83, 106, 143 f. Fischer-Lichte, Erika 18 Fleischman, Suzanne 14 Flett, Alison R. 110 Furnivall, Frederick J. 1 f., 7–9, 27–29, 75, 83 f., 86, 139 Ganz, David 162 Gayk, Shannon 58, 140 f. Gaylord, Alan T. 140 f., 144 Ghosh, Kantik 67, 69 f., 105 Gower, John 8, 17, 26 f., 35, 43, 47 f., 52, 64 f., 73–75, 166, 172–175, 178 Green, Dennis H. 28 f. Green, Richard Firth 7, 148–150 Greenblatt, Stephen 170 Greetham, D. C. 27, 44 f., 145 f. Grudin, Michaela Paasche 150 Hanning, Robert W. 59, 66 f., 98 Harris, Kate 117, 156 Hilmo, Maidie 108, 114

206

Indices

Hodges, Laura F. 162 Hult, David F. 14 Innes, Matthew

150

Jakobi-Mirwald, Christine 152 Johnston, Andrew James 5 f., 29–31, 49, 51, 119–121, 124 f., 132, 141–147, 166 f., 170, 181–183 Justice, Steven 40, 57, 119 f. Kane, George 29, 178 Keller, Wolfram 170 Kendrick, Laura 117 Kleineke, Wilhelm 4 f. Knapp, Ethan 9 f., 28, 39, 46, 122, 127 f., 133, 142, 146, 148 Kocks, Dirk 153 Krochalis, Jeanne E. 139 f. Kuhn, Charles L. 157 Langdell, Sebastian James 89 Lawton, David 9, 31, 58 Lehmann, Paul 29 Lindenbaum, Sheila 2 Louvel, Liliane 113 Loxley, James 17 Lydgate, John 8, 23–27, 170, 172–174, 176 f. Maassen, Irmgard 19 f. Machan, Tim William 127, 142, 171 Marzec, Marcia Smith 7, 60, 71–73 Matthews, William 8 McGregor, James H. 140, 151 McMillan, Douglas J. 49, 65, 146 Meier, Christel 155 Mettauer, Adrian 108 Meyer-Lee, Robert 25 f., 171 f., 175–177 Migne, J. P. 66 Milde, W. 152 Minnis, Alastair J. 66, 166, 170 f. Mitchell, Jerome A. 2, 8 f., 28, 139 Mitchell, William J. Thomas 110–112, 114 Mooney, Linne R. 2, 115, 133, 148 Müller, Jan-Dirk 29

Nafde, Aditi 7 Nichols, Ann Eljenholm 147 Nichols, Stephen G. 12–17, 19, 108, 110 Nissé, Ruth 140 Oldcastle, Sir John 57 f. Olson, Mary C. 112 Parkes, M. B. 8, 62 f., 65 Patterson, Lee 10, 40, 58, 101, 183–185 Pearsall, Derek 8, 27, 30 f., 49–51, 73 f., 127, 135, 139, 149, 155, 167 Perkins, Nicholas 6, 10, 71, 116, 118 Peters, Ursula 152, 154, 164 f. Pitseus, Johannes (also Pitsæus) 23 f. Reeves, A. Compton 8, 27 Richardson, Malcolm 8, 27 Rickert, Margaret 154, 167 Riese, Brigitte 153 Rimmele, Marius 162 Robb, David M. 120 Robertson Jr., D. W. 97 Robinson, F. N. 97 Rooch, Alarich 153 Salter, Elizabeth 155 Scala, Elizabeth 20 Scanlon, Larry 10, 24, 33, 52, 69, 105, 144, 174, 176 Schechner, Richard 17 Scheerre, Herman 157 Schibanoff, Susan 99 Schulz, H. C. 2, 8 Scott, A. B. 66 Scott, Kathleen 154, 157, 161 Sears, Elizabeth 154 f. Seymour, Michael 7, 9, 59, 115–118, 127, 134, 156–158, 167 Simpson, James 10, 24, 174, 176 Smalley, Beryl 66 Smith, Warren S. 98 Snyder, Joel 4 Spearing, A. C. 5, 51, 182 Stackmann, Karl 14 Starkey, Kathryn 108 Stolz, Michael 108

Indices

Strohm, Paul 10, 13 Strohschneider, Peter 14 Sturges, Robert S. 13, 66 f. Symes, Carol 13 Tatarkiewicz, Władysław 113 Tinkle, Theresa 98 Tolmie, Sarah 8, 182 Torti, Anna 5 f. Tout, Thomas Frederick 8, 27, 29, 39 Tribble, Evelyn B. 68 Trigg, Stephanie 171 Turner, D. H. 157 Vácha, Štěpán

207

Watson, Nicolas 174 f. Watt, David 36 Wenzel, Siegfried 14 Wetherbee, Winthrop 74 Wirth, Uwe 18 Wolff, Janet 20, 56 Wyclif, John 57 Yager, Susan 14 Yeager, Robert F. 65, 74 Young, Christopher 150

153

Index of Manuscripts Cambridge

Oxford

Fitzwilliam Museum MS McClean 182 134 Fitzwilliam Museum MS McClean 185 134 University Library MS Gg. vi. 17 133 The Queens’ College MS 12 116

Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 40 86 f., 134 Bodleian Library MS Bodley 221 85 f., 134 Bodleian Library MS Digby 185 86, 109 f., 134, 136, 198 Bodleian Library MS Douce 158 134 Bodleian Library MS Dugdale 45 133 Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 735 85, 134 Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poet. 168 5 Bodleian Library MS Selden Supra 53 134

London British Library MS Additional 24062 (also Formulary) 8 British Library MS Arundel 38 7, 45, 83, 115–118, 121–124, 133, 154–160, 163– 166, 168, 177, 182 f. British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x. 107 British Library MS Harley 372 134 British Library MS Harley 4826 23–25, 116, 134 f. British Library MS Harley 4866 7, 77, 83, 115–118, 121–124, 126–128, 130 f., 135, 137–139, 141, 147, 151, 166 f., 181 f., 198, 200 British Library MS Harley 7333 5 British Library MS Royal 17 D. vi 7, 116, 118, 126, 131, 137, 151, 155, 157 f., 163–166, 168, 182 British Library MS Royal 17 D. xviii 115 British Library MS Additional 18632 116

Others Koninklijke Bibliotheek The Hague, KB 78 D 40 121, 199 Philadelphia, PA, Rosenbach Foundation, MS 1083/30 116, 126 f., 130 f., 135, 137 f., 147, 151 San Marino, CA, Huntington Library MS EL 26 C 9 (also Ellesmere MS) 65, 99, 118, 144, 149 f., 167 Walters Art Gallery, Baltimore, W.102 119, 198 Yale University, Beinecke Library MS 493 3, 7, 134