ABSTRACT
Consideration of Thomas Hoccleve’s relationships with the vernacular poetry of his time has concerned itself largely with Geoffrey Chaucer—understandably so, given his allusions to his ‘mister deere and fadir reverent’. There has accordingly been little study of Hoccleve’s relationship to the French poetry when he wrote, especially the writings of such Middle French poets as Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Oton de Granson, Eustache Deschamps, Christine de Pizan, and Alain Chartier. Hoccleve’s intimate familiarity with the French language itself requires no demonstration. French was, with Latin, the language of Privy Seal documents at the time. In the enormous Formulary which the poet compiled for the benefit of juniors and successors towards the end of his life, after some thirty-eight years’ work in the Privy Seal office, 704 of the 885 specimen documents are in French, with the rest all in Latin. Three of Hoccleve’s surviving poems are known to be versions of French pieces.
