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
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