Petrarch and Chaucer on Fame
27
“vain glory, short mirth, the power of the world, a great family,
the pleasure of the flesh, the falsity of riches, the sweetness of
concupiscence” will all dissolve once death takes up the reins
(1655: 121). The origin of this otherworldly inclination is
conceivably biblical, and Bonaventure believes that the incisive
teachings of the Gospel according to John and the first letter of
John account for the futility of worldly pursuits (122).
31
Thus, it is
divine grace, rather than earthly glory, that should be striven for,
since the pursuit of the latter leads only to an agonizing abyss:
“Leave thou therefore all these things for him, who [God] is above
all” (Bonaventure, 1655: 122-23).
Boethius’s
The Consolation of Philosophy
, which Chaucer
translated from Latin into English, is another noteworthy treatise
on earthly glory in the Middle Ages.
32
Boethius’s aversion to
secular glory is aptly illustrated by his citation of the eponymous
heroine’s lines in Euripides’s
Andromache
: “O glory, glory, all
those thousands of mortals / that you have inflated to make their
lives seem great!” (as cited in Boethius, 2008: 73-74).
33
Indeed,
several aspects of fame presented in the
House of Fame
have
obvious parallels in Boethius: fame, being based on the indiscreet
judgment of the masses (or Fame, in Chaucer’s case), is therefore
31
“If you belonged to the world, the world would love you as its own. Because you
do not belong to the world, but I have chosen you out of the world—therefore
the world hates you”(John 15.19), and “And the world and its desire are passing
away, but those who do the will of God live forever”(1 John 2.17).
32
Though Boethius was canonized as St Severinus after his death and had written
extensively on theological issues in his lifetime, the idea of Christian salvation is
seldom mentioned in the
De Consolatione philosophiae
(Andrew, 2006: 32, 34).
In addition, Boethius’s
De Consolatione philosophiae
was one of the earliest
works rendered into English. An extant tenth-century codex, now reduced to “a
collection of charred leaves,” includes a translation of it in entirety in Old
English prose and verse, “the former certainly by [king] Alfred, the latter
probably”
(Frank, 1993: 3). The huge popularity of the
De Consolatione
philosophiae
can be further attested to by the fact that Elizabeth I had translated
it (Hu, 2006: 328).
33
Another recent translation reads, “Reputation! Reputation! You do indeed puff
off countless nobodies to greatness”
(Euripides, 1994: 43).
