Chaucer in the Field of Cultural Production: Humanism, Dante, and the "House of Fame"

Abstract

Most critics today would probably agree with Winthrop Wetherbee that "the House of Fame is a poem about poetic tradition." 1 Evidence for such a reading abounds. 2 With a frequency that borders on disingenuous name-dropping, the poem explicitly refers to a host of literary authors and authorities, including Virgil twice (HF 378 and 1483), Ovid twice (HF 379 and 1487), Claudian twice (HF 449 and 1509), Dante (HF 450), Isaiah (HF 514), Plato (HF 759), Aristotle (HF 759), Boethius (HF 972), Martianus Capella (HF 985), Statius (HF 1460), Homer (HF 1466), and Lucan (HF 1499). 3 The poem's very composition--its conventional form as a dream vision, its invocations borrowed from Dante, its retelling of the familiar tale of Dido and Aeneas, its encyclopedic eagle guide, and the conventional figure of Fame herself (derived from Ovid and Virgil)--unabashedly manifests a lively interest in traditional poetic authors, genres, and materials. 4 In addition, the pillars of poets that bear up the ceiling in Fame's palace symbolically underscore the importance of poetic tradition as an explicit theme in the poem. By propping up Fame's ceiling with columns of poets, Chaucer indicates that poetry, as embodied in its various traditions, is the very basis for all renown--that of heroes, whole peoples, and even "[t]he grete god of Loves name" (HF 1489). 5 Without poetic tradition, Chaucer implies, Fame's palace would soon come crashing down.

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