Updates from the Hoccleve Archives
There has been a lot of activity over the Hoccleve Archives projects over the last few weeks, mostly relating to a series of computer files known as the HOCCLEX files. These files, which date from the 1980’s, were originally developed by a team of researchers, led by D.C. Greetham, working on a critical edition of Hoccleve’s magnus opus, the Regiment of Princes. They are careful transcriptions of three holograph manuscripts that contain about three dozen poems. Holograph manuscripts are those written by their author, and one of the things that makes Hoccleve so interesting is these three holograph manuscripts, because very few examples of works actually written by their authors survive from this period (most extant manuscripts were produced by scribes, but Hoccleve was a scribe, so he produced his own manuscripts). The HOCCLEX files took the holograph manuscripts and used an early and now mysterious, computer language to mark the transcripts for grammar and spelling. The original idea was that the HOCCLEX files would provide a lexicon of Hoccleve’s usage, so that editors of the Regiment, which survives in many manuscripts, but none by Hoccleve himself, could use the HOCCLEX files to make editorial decisions about spelling variants and similar discrepancies between manuscripts. Unfortunately Greetham’s proposed edition never materialized, though they were used by Charles Blyth in his 1999 edition of the Regiment. Since that time, the HOCCLEX files, and the treasure-trove of information they contain about Hoccleve’s Middle English, have not been easily accessible to scholars. Not only … Continue reading