Title: The making of Thomas Hoccleve's Series /
Authors: Watt, David, 1976-
Year: 2013
Subjects: Hoccleve, Thomas, Criticism and interpretation.; Hoccleve, Thomas, Themes, motives.; Authorship in literature; English literature History and criticism; Books and reading Great Britain History
Abstract: "Thomas Hoccleve's Series (1419-21) tells the story of its own making. The Making of Thomas Hoccleve's Series analyzes this story and considers what it might contribute to the larger story about book production in the fifteenth century. Focusing on four surviving manuscripts made by Hoccleve himself between 1422 and 1426, the first four chapters explore the making of the Series in context. They examine the importance of audience judgment in the selection and juxtaposition of forms, the extent to which the physical flexibility of books could serve the needs of their owners and their makers, the changing tastes of fifteenth-century readers, and the appetite for new paradigms for reform in head and members. The final chapter analyzes the most important non-authorial copy of the Series in order to ask what others made of it. While this study draws on Hoccleve's experience, it asserts that the Series offers a reflection on, not a reflection of, his conception of book production. The ironic contrast between what Hoccleve's narrator intends and accomplishes when making his book is its most redeeming feature, for it provides insight into the many conflicting pressures that shaped the way books were made and imagined in early fifteenth-century England." -- Publisher website.
Contents: List of illustrations -- Note on editions and abbreviations -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction : the making of Thomas Hoccleve's Series -- 'Among the Prees' : San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 111 and the audience in and for the Series -- 'I this book shal make' : San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 744 and teh structure of the series -- 'That labour y forsook' : Durham, University Library, MS Cosin V.iii.9 and the end of the Series -- 'The substaunce of my memory' : London, British Library, MS Additional 24062 and the re-formation of character in the Series -- 'My skyn to turne' : beholding the Series in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Selden Supra 53 -- Conclusion : 'Go, Smal Book' -- Bibliography -- Index.