Table Of Contentspine 18 mm
C
Chaucer
ama, or fame, is a central concern of late medieval literature: where fame
F h
came from, who deserved it, whether it was desirable and how it was
acquired and kept. An interest in fame was not new but was renewed a
Fame
and rethought within the vernacular revolutions of the later Middle Ages.
u AND
The work of Geoffrey Chaucer collates received ideas on the subject of
c
fama, both from the classical world and from the work of his contemporaries.
Chaucer’s place in these intertextual negotiations was readily recognized e REPUTATION AND RECEPTION
r
in his aftermath, as later writers adopted and reworked postures which
Chaucer had struck, in their own bids for literary authority. This volume
a Chaucer Studies
tracks debates on fama which were past, present and future to Chaucer,
n
using his work as a centre point to investigate canon formation in European
literature from the late Middle Ages and into the Early Modern period. d
Isabel Davis is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Birkbeck, University F
of London; Catherine Nall is Senior Lecturer in Medieval Literature at Royal a
Holloway, University of London.
m
Contributors: Joanna Bellis, Alcuin Blamires, Julia Boffey, Isabel Davis,
e
Stephanie Downes, A. S. G. Edwards, Jamie C. Fumo, Andrew Galloway, Chaucer Studies
Nick Havely, Thomas A. Prendergast, Mike Rodman Jones, William T.
Rossiter, Elizaveta Strakhov.
C
A
Cover image: A historiated initial from a Canterbury Tales manuscript, THISA
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depicting Geoffrey Chaucer. © The British Library Board. London, British
RE
IL
Library, MS Lansdowne 851, f. 2. N D
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Chaucer Studies
Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US)
www.boydellandbrewer.com EDITED BY ISABEL DAVIS AND CATHERINE NALL
CHAUCER AND FAME 9781843844075 v4.indd 1 13/11/2014 15:11
CHAUCER STUDIES XLIII
CHAUCER AnD fAmE
CHAUCER STUDIES
ISSN 0261–9822
Founding Editor
† Professor Derek S. Brewer
Editorial Board
Dr Isabel Davis
Professor Robert Meyer-Lee
Dr William T. Rossiter
Since its foundation, the series Chaucer Studies has played a highly signifi-
cant role in the development and promotion of research on Chaucer and
his many cultural contexts. It is an ideal forum for the publication of work
by both younger and established scholars, comprising innovative mono-
graphs and essay collections together with indispensable reference books.
Chaucer scholarship just would not be the same without it.
Professor Alastair Minnis
Douglas Tracy Smith Professor of English, Yale University
The publisher welcomes new proposals for the series; monographs are
particularly encouraged but volumes of essays will be included when
appropriate. All submissions will receive rapid, informed attention. They
should go in the first instance to Caroline Palmer, Editorial Director, at the
following address:
Boydell & Brewer, PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
Previously published volumes in this series
are listed at the back of this book
CHAUCER AnD fAmE
Reputation and Reception
Edited by
ISABEL DAvIS
CATHERInE nALL
D. S. BREWER
© Contributors 2015
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,
transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner
first published 2015
D. S. Brewer, Cambridge
ISBn 978 1 84384 407 5
D. S. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3Df, UK
and of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, nY 14620–2731, USA
website: www.boydellandbrewer.com
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of
URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book,
and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is,
or will remain, accurate or appropriate
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available
from the British Library
This publication is printed on acid-free paper
Contents
List of Illustrations vii
List of Contributors ix
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction 1
Isabel Davis
1 Chaucer Joins the Schiera: The House of Fame, Italy and the 21
Determination of Posterity
William T. Rossiter
2 ‘I wolde … han hadde a fame’: Dante, fame and Infamy in 43
Chaucer’s House of Fame
Nick Havely
3 ‘And kis the steppes where as thow seest pace’: Reconstructing 57
the Spectral Canon in Statius and Chaucer
Elizaveta Strakhov
4 ‘I nolde sette at al that noys a grote’: Repudiating Infamy in 75
Troilus and Criseyde and The House of Fame
Alcuin Blamires
5 The Early Reception of Chaucer’s The House of Fame 87
Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards
6 fame’s Penitent: Deconstructive Chaucer Among the Lancastrians 103
Andrew Galloway
7 After Deschamps: Chaucer’s french fame 127
Stephanie Downes
8 ‘fresch anamalit termes’: The Contradictory Celebrity of 143
Chaucer’s Aureation
Joanna Bellis
9 Chaucer the Puritan 165
Mike Rodman Jones
10 Revenant Chaucer: Early modern Celebrity 185
Thomas A. Prendergast
11 Ancient Chaucer: Temporalities of fame 201
Jamie C. Fumo
Bibliography 221
Index 245
Illustrations
Andrew Galloway, ‘Fame’s Penitent: Deconstructive Chaucer Among the
Lancastrians’
Figure 1. Geoffrey Chaucer, in The Regiment of Princes by Thomas 117
Hoccleve; London, British Library, MS Harley 4866, fol. 88.
© British Library Board.
Figure 2a. Face of John Gower in The Bedford Psalter and Hours; 124
London, British Library, MS Additional 42131, fol. 209v.
© British Library Board.
Figure 2b. Face of Geoffrey Chaucer in The Bedford Psalter and 124
Hours; London, British Library, MS Additional 42131,
fol. 51v. © British Library Board.
Figure 2c. Face of King Richard II in The Bedford Psalter and Hours; 124
London, British Library, MS Additional 42131, fol. 210.
© British Library Board.
Figure 3. Old Amans beginning his confession in the Confessio 126
amantis; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 902, fol. 8v.
By permission of The Bodleian Libraries, The University
of Oxford.
Jamie C. Fumo, ‘Ancient Chaucer: Temporalities of Fame’
Figure 1. Frontispiece to Geoffrey Chaucer, The Workes of our 218
Antient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer, Newly
Printed, ed. Thomas Speght (London: Printed by Adam
Islip, at the charges of Bonham Norton, 1598), STC 5078
(B); Harvard University, Houghton Library.
Figure 2. Chaucer, The House of Fame (Nabu Public Domain 219
Reprints, 2011).
The editors, contributors and publishers are grateful to all the institutions and
persons listed for permission to reproduce the materials in which they hold
copyright. Every effort has been made to trace the copyright holders; apolo-
gies are offered for any omission, and the publishers will be pleased to add
any necessary acknowledgement in subsequent editions.
Contributors
Joanna Bellis is the Harry f. Guggenheim research fellow at Pembroke
College, Cambridge, working on war literature from the fourteenth to the
sixteenth century. Her current projects include a critical edition of John
Page’s The Siege of Rouen (forthcoming, Middle English Texts) and a mono-
graph on accounts of the Hundred Years War in medieval and early modern
literature (provisionally entitled The Word in the Sword: Writing the Hundred
Years War, 1337–1600).
Alcuin Blamires is Professor Emeritus at Goldsmiths, University of London,
where he worked from 1999 until retirement in 2011. His career has focused
on medieval debates about women (notably an anthology and the monograph
The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (1997)) and on Chaucer (most
recently Chaucer, Gender, and Ethics (2006)).
Julia Boffey is Professor of medieval Studies in the Department of English
at Queen mary, University of London. Her interests include middle English
verse, especially lyrics and dream poetry; and the relationships between
manuscript and print in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.
Isabel Davis is Senior Lecturer in medieval Literature at Birkbeck, Univer-
sity of London. She is the author of Writing Masculinity in the Later Middle
Ages (2007) and has articles in Speculum, Textual Practice and Studies in
the Age of Chaucer.
Stephanie Downes is a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of
melbourne in the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for the
History of Emotions. She has published on aspects of late medieval Anglo-
french literary and manuscript culture and its modern reception.
A. S. G. Edwards is Professor of medieval manuscripts, School of English,
University of Kent.
Jamie C. Fumo is Associate Professor of English at mcGill University,
specializing in Chaucer and his period. She is the author of The Legacy of
Apollo: Antiquity, Authority, and Chaucerian Poetics (2010) and recent arti-
cles in Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Chaucer Review and Modern Philology.
She is currently completing a monograph on the textuality and reception of
The Book of the Duchess.
