ABSTRACT
WHEN THIS ESSAY APPEARED IN Modern Philology IN 1989, I thought of it as representing an earlier phase of my scholarly interests. Like several other essays in this collection, it had first been given as a conference paper, in a gathering organised by Ross Robbins called “Chaucer at Albany.” But the basic idea for the piece—a reading of Hoccleve's entire oeuvre as a self-referential artifact operating rhetorically through the “mixed dish” (lanx satura or smorgasbord) of Menippian satire—had been given a rigorous trial before an audience of students and faculty at Helaine Newstead's medieval colloquium at CUNY. This was a very collegial, and useful group. With such distinguished participants as Allen Mandelbaum, Sam Levin, Bob Payne, and Fred Goldin, and with a parade of equally distinguished visitors drawn by Helaine's position as a sort of medievalist queen bee at the centre of a network of scholars, the colloquium provided an informal, and relatively hospitable, forum for us to try out new ideas before leaping into print. The colloquium ceased with Helaine's death, for there was no-one else with her gravitational force, her ability to hold together a disparate and ever-changing clientele.
