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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
The House of Fame is the most curiously constructed of Chaucer's works. Although the poem has all the trappings of a typical love-vision, it deals with a heterogeneous body of subject matter that often seems only remotely connected with love. Love is the dominant theme of the first book, which retells the story of Dido and Æneas, and the purpose of Chaucer's trip to the house of Fame is presumably to hear love tidings. Yet the second book is taken up with the scientific lessons of the eagle, while the third is concerned with Fame viewed first as the maker of reputations and secondly in her role as the disseminator of rumor. How is one to reconcile these themes and make sense out of the haphazard way in which Chaucer has strung them together? Of course, one can dismiss the problem as a case of poor artistry, and that is precisely what many critics have done. Dorothy Everett, for instance, writes of the poem, “As a whole it is not a success, and was perhaps left unfinished for that reason.” However, the poem is so very successful in part and so very nearly complete (the ending, for that matter, may have been suppressed) that it is at least worth speculating whether the failure to make sense out of the whole is our own instead of Chaucer's.
1 “Chaucer's Love Visions,” Essays on Middle English Literature (Oxford, 1955), p. 101.
2 A strong case for the unity of the poem is made out by Paul G. Ruggiers, “The Unity of Chaucer's Bouse of Fame,” SP, L (1953), 16–29 and Gardiner Stillwell, “Chaucer's ‘O Sentence’ in the Hous of Fame,” ES, xxxvii (1956), 149–157. Both these critics see a serious philosophical meaning underlying and unifying Chaucer's high comedy. Ruggiers interprets all three books as variations on the Boethian theme of earthly mutability. Boethius himself may be the “man of gret auctorite” about to deliver a formula about the “falseness of glory that the world offers” (p. 29). Stillwell sees Chaucer's “o sentence” as distrust of worldly happiness. I would agree that this attitude is implicit throughout the House of Fame and gives genuine depth to much of Chaucer's satire. However, I do not believe that such a “key” makes the rapidly shifting scenes and action of the poem any less confusing. Such an interpretation, though valid, is not immediately apparent to the reader, nor are Boethian idea sever made explicit as they are, for example, in Troilus (iv. 960–1078).
3 The best analysis of the humor in the Bouse of Fame is George Lyman Kittredge's celebrated lecture, Chaucer and Bis Poetry (Cambridge, Mass., 1915), pp. 73–107. Another excellent study with special emphasis on Chaucer's satire of literary conventions is by Kemp Malone, Chapters on Chaucer (Baltimore, 1951), pp. 42–60.
4 Two possible occasions have been suggested for the original presentation of the poem. R. J. Schoeck, “A Legal Reading of Chaucer's Bous of Fame,” Univ. of Toronto Quarterly, xxiii (1954), 185–192, gives evidence that the poem may have been written for the Christmas revels of the Inner Temple. Stillwell suggests that the poem may have been intended as an ironic new year's greeting. Either theory would fit in well with the interpretation of the poem as parody—certainly an ideal form of holiday entertainment.
5 Chaucer and Bis Poetry, p. 75.
6 Chaucer's pose as a naïve observer is, of course, not confined to the Bouse of Fame. On the relationship between the poet and his fictional persona in the Canterbury Tales see E. T. Donaldson, “Chaucer the Pilgrim,” PMLA, lxix (1954), 928–936. Since the completion of this article, a similar view of the dreamer in the Bouse of Fame has been presented by Dorothy Bethurum, “Chaucer's Point of View as Narrator in the Love Poems,” PMLA, lxxiv (1959), 511–520.
7 Quotations from Chaucer are from the 2nd edn. of F. N. Robinson (Boston, 1957).
8 Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Ernest Langlois, S vols., SATF (Paris, 1914–24), ii, 11. 3898–3910.
9 The thematic connection between books one and three is discussed by Ruggiers, pp. 17–20.
10 Chaucer and His Poetry, pp. 87–88.
11 Œuvres de Froissart, Poésies, ed. A. Scheler, 3 vols. (Brussels, 1870–72), I, 28–29, 11. 936–941. Alfred David
12 For a full development of this theory see Bertrand H. Bronson, “Chaucer's Hous of Fame: Another Hypothesis,” Vol. iii, No. 4 (1934), 171–192.
