Identity in Public Contexts: Hoccleve and Langland in Conversation

Sponsoring Organization(s)

International Hoccleve Society; International Piers Plowman Society

Organizer Name

Elon Lang

Organizer Affiliation

Univ. of Texas-Austin

Presider Name

Ruen-chuan Ma

Presider Affiliation

Utah Valley Univ.

Paper Title 1

The Language of Healing in Hoccleve's Series and Langland's Piers Plowman

Presenter 1 Name

Bradley J. Peppers

Presenter 1 Affiliation

Univ. of South Carolina-Columbia

Paper Title 2

Peace's Bill to Parliament: Affect in the Body Politic

Presenter 2 Name

Jonathan Forbes

Presenter 2 Affiliation

Univ. of California-Santa Barbara

Paper Title 3

Mis-Measured Steps: Anti-Mendicant Poetics in Piers Plowman and The Regiment of Princes

Presenter 3 Name

Nicholas Myklebust

Presenter 3 Affiliation

Regis Univ.

Start Date

10-5-2019 10:00 AM

Session Location

Fetzer 2040

Description

While scholars often note that Hoccleve’s and Langland’s poetic personae each make the other more understandable,[1] rarely have these poets been analyzed together in great detail. Thus, with this session, The International Hoccleve Society and International Piers Plowman Society seek to provide an occasion to do so. The Societies invite paper submissions that examine the ways interpretive discourses around Hoccleve’s and Langland’s works overlap and intersect. On the broadly-defined topic of public identity-formation, participants might consider how these poets construct identities for themselves, or for other identifiable social groups--asking: how and why might Langland and Hoccleve distinguish specifically public identities from each other and from private identity? Participants might also explore the politicization of identity, such as in late-medieval satire and advice on good governance in the context of 14th and 15th century political struggles. Other related questions might include: how do medieval depictions of writing as labor reveal interfaces between discourses of interiority and political speech? Or, how were revision and editing used by poets and scribes--like Hoccleve and Langland--as a means for their own (or others’) social/political rehabilitation? How do either or both poets position themselves in relation to religious or professional communities that are themselves enmeshed in complex public and private interconnections?

[1] For example: Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, in “Piers Plowman”, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 537, suggests Hoccleve’s “poetic persona and ‘embryonic’ allegory” is influenced by Langland; C. David Benson, in Public Piers Plowman (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 85, uses Hoccleve’s “I”-voice as a point of reference to characterize Langland’s poetic persona as lacking realistic historicity; and Larry Scanlon, in “Nothing but Change and Variance: The Problem of Hoccleve’s Politics” Chaucer Review 48.4 (2014): 515, argues that Hoccleve’s stance “as immoral man about to tell a moral tale—obviously owes something to Chaucer’s Pardoner and something to the self-lacerating moral persona of William Langland.” Elon Lang

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May 10th, 10:00 AM

Identity in Public Contexts: Hoccleve and Langland in Conversation

Fetzer 2040

While scholars often note that Hoccleve’s and Langland’s poetic personae each make the other more understandable,[1] rarely have these poets been analyzed together in great detail. Thus, with this session, The International Hoccleve Society and International Piers Plowman Society seek to provide an occasion to do so. The Societies invite paper submissions that examine the ways interpretive discourses around Hoccleve’s and Langland’s works overlap and intersect. On the broadly-defined topic of public identity-formation, participants might consider how these poets construct identities for themselves, or for other identifiable social groups--asking: how and why might Langland and Hoccleve distinguish specifically public identities from each other and from private identity? Participants might also explore the politicization of identity, such as in late-medieval satire and advice on good governance in the context of 14th and 15th century political struggles. Other related questions might include: how do medieval depictions of writing as labor reveal interfaces between discourses of interiority and political speech? Or, how were revision and editing used by poets and scribes--like Hoccleve and Langland--as a means for their own (or others’) social/political rehabilitation? How do either or both poets position themselves in relation to religious or professional communities that are themselves enmeshed in complex public and private interconnections?

[1] For example: Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, in “Piers Plowman”, The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, Ed. David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 537, suggests Hoccleve’s “poetic persona and ‘embryonic’ allegory” is influenced by Langland; C. David Benson, in Public Piers Plowman (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 85, uses Hoccleve’s “I”-voice as a point of reference to characterize Langland’s poetic persona as lacking realistic historicity; and Larry Scanlon, in “Nothing but Change and Variance: The Problem of Hoccleve’s Politics” Chaucer Review 48.4 (2014): 515, argues that Hoccleve’s stance “as immoral man about to tell a moral tale—obviously owes something to Chaucer’s Pardoner and something to the self-lacerating moral persona of William Langland.” Elon Lang