The Chaucer Review: An Indexed Bibliography (Vols. 1-30)

Richardson, Malcolm. "Hoccleve in His Social Context." 20 (1986): 313-22.
Thomas Hoccleve includes many biographical details in his works. Though some scholars assert that these details are merely literary conventions, scrutiny of Hoccleve's society and his place in it as Privy Seal clerk reveals that these details make an accurate portrait of Hoccleve as a bureaucrat: "a bungler, misfit, and perpetual also-ran" (321).

Smith, Macklin. "Sith and Syn in Chaucer's Troilus." 26 (1992): 266-82.
Though the forms for "since" do not generally alter readings of lines in which they occur, awareness of "syn," used less frequently than "sith" or "sithen" shifts readers' perceptions of the lines in which "syn" appears because "syn" implies some kind of moral judgment. Chaucer uses "syn" in Troilus and Criseyde more often than most writers, and comparison of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight to works like Cursor mundi and Piers Plowman and to writers like Robert Manning of Brunne and Hoccleve shows that scribes were indifferent to the form they used. Chaucer is then responsible for the increased use of "syn" in Troilus and Criseyde, suggesting that he intended to use the pun and to create ambiguity and double meanings. Chaucer uses the same pun in the "Legend of Phyllis," the Miller's and Man of Law's Tales, and the Wife of Bath's Prologue and tale. In Troilus and Criseyde, however, this pun is more frequent, and Chaucer employs it to create double reality and Christian irony.