Petrarch and Chaucer on Fame
25
generally critical of earthly fame, yet the sober reflection on fame
signals at once Chaucer’s abiding regard for fame. In other words,
if the idea of earthly fame had never haunted Chaucer, his
strenuous efforts to downplay worldly glory would be inexplicable.
An examination of the literary devices in the
House of Fame
reveals that a longing for literary fame, whether inborn or acquired
through exposure to Italian humanism, lingers in Chaucer despite
his apparent disapproval of earthly glory. For starters, Chaucer’s
invocation of the Muses at the beginnings of Book 2 and 3 (1997:
520-22, 1091-1109) speaks of a significant urge to compare
himself with classical precursors. Piero Boitani observes that
Chaucer is the first English poet to plead for divine help from the
Muses (1984: 203).
25
As his Italian forerunners such as Dante and
Boccaccio had adopted the same technique, the fact that Chaucer
followed suit implicitly betrays his desire for a sense of
connectedness with classical writers through his Italian precursors.
Similarly, Chaucer’s division of the
House of Fame
into three
books betokens his literary aspirations. Though the modern reader
might be unimpressed by this seemingly unremarkable move, it was
revolutionary in Chaucer’s time. John Anthony Burrow maintains
that the act of dividing one work into multiple parts was an
innovation in English poetry (1982: 18). As is his invocation of the
Muses, Chaucer’s division of the
House of Fame
into three books
bespeaks his ambition to emulate classical giants in a poem chiefly
concerned with the nature of literature and fame.
What prevents Chaucer from speaking his mind about his
ambition for fame is the Christian doctrine that is intended to
25
Minnis, nevertheless, points out an inaccuracy in Boitani’s argument. Since some
English poets before Chaucer had already adopted the device of invocation in
their Latin poems, it is more precise to describe Chaucer as the first one to
“invoke the Muses in Middle English”
(Minnis, Scattergood, & Smith, 1995:
174). As for those earlier English poets who had invoked the Muses in their
Latin works, see Minnis et al., 1995: 174. Besides, Chaucer invokes the Muses in
two other poems:
Anelida and Arcite
and the
Troilus and Criseyde
(Hardman,
1986: 478).
