This study also situates Hoccleve's accomplishments in a transnational poetic context - offering French and Italian precedents for Hoccleve's moralization of Chaucer, while examining the influence of contemporary French poetry on Hoccleve's work.
Offers a significant new reading of the late medieval poet Thomas Hoccleve, illustrating Hoccleve's role in recasting Chaucer as a figure of intellectual and moral authority, and situating Hoccleve - and the nascent English literary tradition - firmly in the context of heresy and religious reform.