“Lo, Heer the Fourme”: Hoccleve'sSeries,Formulary, and Bureaucratic Textuality

Abstract

Critical focus on the Series's depiction of madness and self-reflexivity has often downplayed Hoccleve's innovative formal strategies. This essay argues that the Series's narrative of social rehabilitation is part of a larger project to theorize secular poetic authority. Drawing upon the bureaucratic textual techniques that he employed in the Formulary, Hoccleve explores a “documentary poetic” based on the notion of citationality. The Compleinte and Dialogue pursue an analogy between madness and the absence of intentionality implied by the textual objectification of human relationships. Then, the Dialogue shows how authority may be both instantiated and undermined by the citation of such textual forms. By utilizing the bureaucratic apparatus of contract, oath, and witness as a solution to the problem of rumor faced by his narrator, Hoccleve proposes an innovative solution to the problem of grounding secular poetic agency in a bureaucratic environment.

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