The Complaint, as the opening segment of Hoccleve’s Series, tells the story of its narrator’s recovery from a “wylde infirmitee” and establishes the subject matter for the Series’ second section, the Dialogue with a Friend. As a poem it is thematically interesting, connected to issues of self and subjectivity, autobiography and literary convention, intentionality and textual artifice. The poetic persona of The Complaint relates how he experienced a period of apparent mental instability, and the poem also touches upon the narrator’s perception of his own subsequent social stigmatization as he considers the change in the reaction of the community towards him. Essentially the poem can be seen as split into two segments: a short introductory prologue in which the persona considers writing down his prior encounters with mental and physical ill-health, and The Complaint proper...
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Citation: Cummings, Raymond. "The Complaint". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 18 March 2008 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=1214, accessed 09 June 2026.]
