Thomas occleve biography

Thomas Hoccleve (born 1368/69, London—died c.
Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (1368/69–1426) was a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature, significant for promoting Chaucer as "the father of.
Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve was a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature, significant for promoting Chaucer as "the father of English literature", and as a poet in his own right.

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Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Hoccleve, Thomas

HOCCLEVE or OCCLEVE, THOMAS (1370?–1450?), poet and a clerk in the privy seal office for twenty-four years, is known to us only by his poems and by what he tells us of himself in them. In his biographical ‘Male Regle,’ ll. 17–21, he appeals to ‘my lord the Fourneval that now is treasurer’ to pay him the yearly 10l. due to him. Furnival was treasurer from 1405 to 1408. Hence Hoccleve's appeal may be dated late in 1406 or early in 1407. As the poet confesses in the same poem, ll. 110–12, that he had been over-eating and over-drinking for twenty years past (? from 1387 to 1407), he cannot well have been born after 1370. He also confesses himself a coward, and fond of treating ‘Venus femel lusty children deer’ to sweet wine and wafers. He haunted the taverns and cookshops at Westminster (ll. 177–84). When he wrote his best-known work, ‘De Regimine’ (1411–12), he lived at ‘Chestres Inne, right fast by the Stronde’ (De Reg. p. 1). Before that, he belonged to a dinner-club in the Temple (Phillipps MS. leaf 4

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THOMAS HOCCLEVE (or OCCLEVE), English poet, was born probably in 1368/9, for, writing in 1421/2 he says he was fifty-three years old.¹ He ranks, like his more voluminous and better known contemporary Lydgate, among those poets who have a historical rather than intrinsic importance in English literature. Their work rarely if ever rises above mediocrity; in neither is there even any clear evidence of a poetic temperament. Yet they represented for the 15th century the literature of their time, and kept alive, however faintly, the torch handed on to them by their "maister" Chaucer, to whom Occleve pays an affectionate tribute in three passages in the De Regimine Principum.

What is known of Occleve's life has to be gathered mainly from his works. At eighteen or nineteen he obtained a clerkship in the Privy Seal Office, which he retained on and off, in spite of much grumbling, for about thirty-five years. He had hoped for a benefice, but none came; and in 1399 he received instead a small annuity, which was not always paid as regularly as he would have wis

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Thomas Hoccleve

English poet (1368/1369–1426)

Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (1368/69–1426) was a key figure in 15th-century Middle English literature, significant for promoting Chaucer as "the father of English literature", and as a poet in his own right.^[1]^[3] His poetry, especially his longest work, the didactic work Regement of Princes, was extremely popular in the fifteenth century, but went largely ignored until the late twentieth century, when it was re-examined by scholars, particularly John Burrow. Today he is most well known for his Series, which includes the earliest autobiographical description of mental illness in English, and for his extensive scribal activity. Three holographs of his poetry have survived, and he also copied literary manuscripts by other writers. As a clerk of the Office of the Privy Seal, he wrote hundreds of documents in French and Latin.

Biography

Hoccleve was born in 1368, as he states when writing in 1421 (Dialogue, 1.246) that he has seen "fifty wyntir and three". Nothing is known of his family, but th