Petrarch and Chaucer on Fame
7
this work:
4
O my song of Thebes, that I labored at late at night, for
twice six years? Surely present already, Fame has ceased
your way and begun to show you, new-made, to the
future;
already, magnanimous Caesar deigns to acknowledge
you;
5
Italy’s eager schoolboys already recite you from memory.
Live on, I pray! Do not try to surpass the Aeneid divine,
but, at a distance, follow and always revere Her imprint.
(2008: 345)
Statius’s elation revealed in this passage bespeaks at least two
divergences from the norm of anonymity in Greek epics. Firstly,
the author enthuses about the present success his book enjoys and
basks in the admiration his new-found fame brings. More
noteworthy are Statius’s uncertainty about the future fate of his
book and his passionate yearning for posthumous fame. This aspect
of fame inevitably entails competition or rivalry, for securing a place
in the literary pantheon implies comparison and besting both one’s
contemporaries and the greatest writers of the ages. This
competitiveness is easily recognizable when Statius acknowledges
the superiority of Virgil’s matchless
Aeneid
as a touchstone for his
Thebaid
to “follow and always revere Her [the
Aeneid’
s] imprint”
(2008: 345). Hence, from Statius’s case we can conclude that no
later than the Roman period the concept of fame had already
established itself as a strong incentive to the poetic enterprise.
4
It should be noted that the influence of Statius’s (48-96 CE)
Thebaid
on Chaucer’s
Troilus and Criseyde
is tremendous. Lee Patterson has enumerated many places in
the
Troilus and Criseyde
where the influence of the
Thebaid
is unmistakable (1991:
134). On the extent of Statius’s impact on Chaucer, Boyd Ashby Wise contends
that Statius is Chaucer’s most familiar Latin writer after Ovid and, perhaps,
Boethius (1967: 141).
5
According to Jane Wilson Joyce’s annotation, the current Roman Emperor
(Domitian, 51-96 CE) was aware of the existence of the
Thebaid
and might have
leafed through it (Statius, 2008: 458).
