32
E
UR
A
MERICA
authors referred to by Chaucer are respectively responsible for the
fame of different entities, human or otherwise: Troy, Aeneas,
Venus, Caesar, Pompey, Pluto, and Proserpina. In this sense,
Chaucer does not regard literature as merely
belles- lettres
, but as a
vehicle for establishing reputation. Even when Chaucer comments
on the unbridgeable discrepancies among Homer, Dares, Dictys,
Lollius, Guido de Columnis, and Geoffrey of Monmouth in their
accounts of the Trojan War, he does not fail to add that the task of
preserving Troy’s reputation is an uphill one (1997: 1466-1474).
Judging from this dimension, for Chaucer literary works are
charged with the preservation of human glory.
There exists no conclusive evidence that Chaucer had read
Petrarch’s coronation oration, yet some arguments in the
House of
Fame
are surprisingly consonant with the central theses in
Petrarch’s acceptance speech. Like Petrarch, Chaucer senses the
difference between the poet’s own immortality and the immortality
of those celebrated by the poet; even if Chaucer does not explore
the difference between these two aspects as systematically as
Petrarch does, he is fairly confident in the immortalizing function
of literature. Chaucer depicts Virgil standing on a tin-plated iron
pillar as the leading exponent of Aeneas’s reputation. A passage in
the
Aeneid
reveals a similar view that it is writers who help
preserve the memory of people who, but for these writings, would
otherwise sink into oblivion:
Ah, fortunate pair!
40
if my poetry has any influence,
Time in its passing shall never obliterate your memory,
As long as the house of Aeneas dwell by the Capitol’s moveless
Rock, and the head of the Roman family keeps his power.
41
(Virgil, 1986: 266)
40
“Fortunate pair”
refers to the Trojan heroes Nisus and Euryalus, who are
surrounded by enemies and finally killed in action.
41
The four lines were cited by Petrarch in his coronation oration, and the adopted
translation here is a recent one.
