Imagining the Author in Late Medieval England and France: The Transmission and Reception of Christine de Pizan’s Epistre au dieu d’Amours and Thomas Hoccleve’s Letter of Cupid

Abstract

Although it seems likely that Hoccleve’s translation of Christine de Pizan’s Epistre au dieu d’Amours was motivated by his desire to emulate her success as an author, this article shows that his Letter of Cupid played at best a limited role in establishing his literary reputation. While Christine could exercise a degree of control over the copying of her text, Hoccleve could not, and, as a result, his poem was circulated anonymously and often in damaged or truncated forms. This discrepancy is read as revelatory of differences between the modes of authorship available to Middle French and Middle English poets. Hoccleve’s status as a victim of the literary culture in which he wrote is not unequivocal, however, since the indeterminate attitude toward women that characterizes the Letter may have been a quality with which he deliberately imbued his text: thanks to his firsthand knowledge of the London book trade, Hoccleve was well placed to appreciate the potential popularity of such a versatile poem. Since the Letter is extant in ten non-autograph copies, it appears that a measure of that popularity was realized, even if the personal fame that might have accompanied it remained elusive.