Petrarch and Chaucer on Fame
9
Decameron
and
Il Teseida
(1987: 237). The Italian influence is
singled out here for two reasons. First, it is generally acknowledged
that the
House of Fame
is informed by earlier Italian writers,
particularly Dante and Petrarch. Second, by the end of the
thirteenth century poets and artists had been already held in high
esteem in Italy. Derek Albert Pearsall observes that Italian poets,
especially those based in Florence, were well respected, and that
these poets could state their opinions freely (1992: 104).
7
The
pervasive pursuit of literary fame in Italy is also attested to by the
example of Albertino Musatto, a contemporary of Dante. As a poet
laureate, the extent to which he was fêted is staggering: “Every
Christmas Day the doctors and students of both colleges at the
university came in solemn procession before his [Musatto’s] house
with trumpets and, as it seems, with burning tapers, to salute him
and bring him presents” (Burckhardt, 1958: 152). In the case of
Dante, he achieved excellence as both poet and political
commentator and desired to be accordingly recognized. Though
Dante once claimed that fame is empty and transitory, his longing
for it is obvious (Burckhardt, 1958: 151). Boccaccio, in his
biography of Dante, also explicitly refers to Dante’s overt and
perhaps excessive yearning for fame: “He was eager for honour
and glory, perhaps more eager than befitted his illustrious virtue”
(2002: 43).
8
For Dante, emphasis on fame entails a reconsideration of
7
In
Life of Dante
, Boccaccio mentions that the bulk of Dante’s literary output is
written in “our own Florentine idiom” (2002: 7), and that Dante is a native of
Florence, where he receives his elementary education (13). Yet it should be noted
that the relation between Dante and his birthplace is bittersweet: Dante was
exiled from Florence on political grounds and died among the strangers bitterly
(Boccaccio, 2002: 23-33).
8
Besides Dante and Petrarch, another pride of Florence, Boccaccio, was also keen
on the topic of fame. Besides being treated in the
Amorosa Visione
, fame is the
focal point in both
Il Teseida
and the last day’s talk in the
Decameron
(Howard,
1987: 237).
