Petrarch and Chaucer on Fame
21
once well-known, but in each name one or two letters have become
unrecognizable due to the thawing of the icy rock (Chaucer, 1997:
1136-1145). This dismal sight triggers a sense of sadness in the
narrator, who laments how short-lived fame is in the tide of time:
“So unfamouse was wox hir fame, / But, men seyn, what may ever
last?” (1146-1147). While still trying to digest the disheartening
fact, the narrator spots on the northern side of the hill the names
of other famous ancients and finds that all these inscriptions are
well preserved and therefore perfectly legible (1551-1158). The
cause of the difference between these two slopes is soon identified
by the narrator: the inscriptions on the northern hill are protected
from the sunshine by the shade offered by a high castle
(1159-1164). This sudden epiphany deepens the impression that
the preservation of fame oftentimes hinges on irrelevant factors.
The vivid delineation of the different fates of previous personalities
simply due to the locations where their names are inscribed attests
to the prominent role pure chance plays in the continuation of
fame.
Another aspect of fame, as the narrator observes, is its
tendency towards self-aggrandizement. After strolling awhile in the
palace and reciting a portion of household names he sees there, an
intriguing phenomenon comes to the narrator’s notice. The beryl
on the walls, the narrator notes, magnifies things in their
reflection:
21
Upon these walles of berile
That shoone ful lyghter than a glas
And made wel more than hit was
To semen every thinge ywis, (Chaucer, 1997: 1288-1291)
For the narrator, this special feature of beryl is strongly suggestive
of the self-augmentative and deceptive nature of worldly fame. By
21
According to Nick Havely, beryl is a kind of rock-crystal that was “used for
glazing and magnifying (e.g. in spectacles)”
(Chaucer, 1997: 179).
