Petrarch and Chaucer on Fame
11
time” (Cooper, 2010: 366). The orthodox medieval conception of
mortal life, indicates James Harvey Robinson, is that earthly life is
merely “a brief period of probation,” during which everyone in a
society is expected to fulfill dutifully his or her role allotted by
Providence, hopefully envisioning a life of beatitude in another
world (1970: 18). Yet Petrarch was unconvinced of the passivity
implied by this kind of mindset; instead, he wondered if there
could be worthy secular causes for people to pursue.
Petrarch’s idea of poet as immortalizer emerges early in his
literary career. In his
Metrica
, a poem on the death of his mother,
Eletta,
10
Petrarch not only feels relieved at Eletta’s being lifted to a
new and better world, but also foresees his apodictic following in
her footsteps sometime in the future. Jonathan Usher points out
that, though a fledgling poet, in this poem Petrarch had already
begun to consider himself a “secular immortalizer” in exploring
some pivotal concepts which he kept revisiting and refining in later
works: (1) through language the poet preserves memories; (2) the
essential vulnerability of memory due to the ravages of time; (3)
the poet is immortalized once he succeeds in immortalizing others;
(4) fame is destined to fade with the decay of body; and (5)
funerary monuments are of little help in retaining fame (Usher,
2007: 62-63).
Petrarch’s longing for earthly reputation was hedged about
with contemporary Christian disdain for attachment to this world.
10
The length of
Metrica
, thirty-eight Latin hexameters, corresponds to Eletta’s age
at her death (Kirkham, 2009: 6). A prose translation of a portion of the poem is
offered by Jonathan Usher: “For all time, faithful mother, my tongue will sing
your glory. I shall offer my obsequies to you for a long time. And after the death
of my perishable body, so far still alive, dear mother, whence you too still live,
when the grave will have weighed down on my ashes too, unless forgetful age
presses down upon me, we shall live equally, equally we shall both be
remembered. Should harsh fate have something else in store, and unwelcome
death should come to extinguish my fame along with my frail body, then I pray
that you at least live on after the grave, and Lethal oblivion not drown you”
(
as
cited in
Usher, 2007: 62).
