The Predator as Patron and Protector:
Soaring with John de Gaunt in The House of Fame
by Jenny (Walicek) Clendenen
San Jose State University | Bonita M. Cox Award for Outstanding Achievement in Classical & Medieval Studies (2017)
I thought that the potential/probable illegitimacy of Thomas Chaucer must have come out somewhere in Chaucer’s writings – most logically The House of Fame, because of its enigmatic nature and post-Italy timing--and, having just spent five years researching hidden messages in a dream vision of Spenser’s, I was eager to dig up more However, I quickly sympathized with Geffrey’s feeling of being overwhelmed. There’s a mountain of research yet to be done to adequately make this point (or prove it wrong in the process). There is some limited existing scholarship on the notion of Gaunt-in-Fame; in time, I would like to do this subject better justice.
For most of Geoffrey Chaucer’s life, the man who controlled the poet’s status, lifestyle, and purse was King Edward’s son, Sir John de Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the relationship between Chaucer and his patron was not one-sided but symbiotic. Chaucerians have generally viewed the two men as good friends, not because they were eventually related by marriage, but because at a deeper level they seemed cut from the very same cloth. “They were brilliant,” John Gardner says, “in many ways like-minded men, intellectually daring, scrupulously honorable, at least by their own medieval code, and emotionally useful to each other” (157). Gaunt gave Chaucer the social status and respectability that middle-class Englishmen craved, and Chaucer gave Gaunt a kind of inclusion in the artistic, meditative life that suited his nature but not his role. Being a patron and collector was as close as the duke could get to being an artist himself, and he would have taken a vicarious pleasure in Chaucer’s rise and evolution as an artist. In fact it was Gaunt who, by helping Chaucer get assignments abroad, helped him transcend his role as a mere court poet (Kane 20).
It was while he was in Italy “on the king’s business” in the 1370s that Chaucer was exposed to the rich twining of theological and moral messages in the Divinia Commedia. The poems of Petrarch and Boccaccio, too, set powerful examples for him of technical prowess and spiritual subject matter. Such poetry was in sharp contrast to Chaucer’s existing works (Lerer 36). As John Gower writes, “in the floures of his youthe” Chaucer had filled the world full “Of ditees and of songes gladye” (Confessio Amantis VIII. 2943, 45). Those poems were certainly among the “worldy vanitees” of which he would eventually repent, in the retraction he placed at the end of the Parson’s Tale (Pearsall 63). After his exposure to Italian writers, his emulation of French poetry, most importantly of its emphasis on fine amour, would take a decided turn.
Chaucer returned to England no longer content to exalt such relatively trivial, unrealistic topics as courtly love. In fact, in subsequent compositions such as Troilus and Criseyde, courtly love is reduced to a destructive fantasy (Kane 21). No longer would he compose relatively frivolous ditties for the amusement of the nobles. He had seen the righteousness of using one’s art to influence moral behavior, and he had witnessed firsthand the adoration and acclaim that doing so had brought to Dante Aligheri (Kane 21). Chaucer came home with a new view of himself as a poet with a moralist role -- and with the hope of achieving immorality.
The House of Fame, a clear emulation of Dante, reflects both this view and this hope (Lerer 36). Thought to have been written in 1378, this poem does more, however, than comment on the capricious, tenuous nature of fame, and preserve the poet’s actual name within its lines. I believe The House of Fame expresses Chaucer’s mixed feelings about his benefactor, Sir John de Gaunt – feelings of both gratitude and embarrassment.
The basis for gratitude is obvious. Gaunt, as stated earlier, was a respected nobleman whose generous patronage that had given Chaucer the opportunity and circumstances to elevate in society and evolve as an artist. The embarrassment might have arisen because of Gaunt’s sexual indiscretions. Certain behaviors that Chaucer might have brushed off or resigned himself to before might have sat with him differently after his Italian sojourn. In his new role as a moralist, he was at least conflicted about Gaunt’s licentious behavior. For despite the duke’s many fine qualities and traits, he was known for his multiple mistresses – and if the rumors are true, his liaisons included Philippa, Chaucer’s wife.
There is some strong evidence that in 1366, John de Gaunt had impregnated the unmarried Philippa Rouet, who was one of his wife’s damoiselles, before he departed for Spain that September, and that he had asked his attendant Chaucer to do him the favor of making Philippa an honest woman (Gardner 153). If true, Elizabeth Chaucer, ostensibly the daughter of Philippa and Chaucer born about nine months after their marriage, would indeed have been Gaunt’s child (154). Furthermore, there is arguable evidence that Philippa’s relationship with Gaunt continued past her wedding. Scholars have long debated the possibility that Thomas Chaucer, most likely born in 1373, was fathered by Gaunt, whose then-mistress (later wife) was Philippa’s sister Katherine. In other words, Gaunt might have been making love to both sisters at once.
The arguments about Thomas’s paternity have calcified into two camps. The first, for which Russell Krauss is an oft-quoted spokesman, traces its claim for Thomas’s bastardry to sixteenth-century Speght: “Yet some hold opinion (but I know not upon what grounds) that Thomas Chaucer was not the sonne of Geoffrey Chaucer, but rather some kinsman of his whom hee brought up” (Gardner 158). In support of this statement are cited Thomas’s usage and alteration of family crests, his apparent disinheritance by his mother’s Rouet line, his inexplicable receipt of generous grants from Gaunt, and various less convincing arguments (158-60). The opposing camp, fronted by esteemed scholars Furnivall, Tyrwhitt, Kirk, Manly, and Lounsbury, casts a dubious glance on the possibility that Gaunt fathered Thomas. Their objections include Gascoigne’s contemporary reference to Thomas as Geoffrey’s son, and the fact, posited by Manly, that Gaunt’s marriage to Katherine Swynford after an affair with her sister would have violated canonical law. However, such a violation, as Gardner points out, probably would not have concerned philanderers (161). It is beyond the scope of this paper to further probe this question, which has been examined extensively elsewhere; suffice it to say that there is reasonable evidence that Gaunt had a hand – or rather, something else – in the the conception of one or both children. As Gardner summarizes, “however we may wish to deny the rumor, the whole business looks exceedingly suspect” (156).
Despite this probability, both the poet and his patron are generally regarded as honorable men who were good to and for each other, and for Chaucer, that relationship may have taken precedence over any other. Regardless of his feelings, it would certainly not have behooved him to make overt observations of his patron’s immoral behavior. There is no question that gossip about such behavior on the part of his patron and wife would have caused him, at the least, embarrassment -- and that gossip might have threatened his hard-won social status. As an injured man, a social climber, and an upstart moralist, Chaucer would have felt compelled to write something on the subject. He would have done so surreptitiously, however. He was far too wise to bite the feeding hand.
Chaucer is well known for depicting people of all ranks and roles in moral dilemmas or immoral situations, whether of their own making or imposed by circumstance. Sometimes his depictions are candid and frank, as in most of the Canterbury Tales. Sometimes they are obscured in dream visions, or dreams within tales, wherein his narrator “envisions” subtly didactic scenes from which readers might draw conclusions. The House of Fame is one such poem, more than two thousand lines of a vision about the illusory, fragile nature of fame – or so, at first glance, it seems.
Dream visions, though, are often incredibly complex, and packed with hidden ironies (Kane 20). The literary type, refined in the fourteenth century, was neither fiction, nor history, nor an argument for history within fiction; it allowed instead, as George Kane says, “a vehicle for subjects ranging from the amatory or social, to satire, through eschatology” (Kane 8). The dreamer was implicitly connected to the poet – not only in verifiable factual ways, but sometimes even in name, if cryptographically (Kane 8-9). This vehicle allowed the poet to insert himself as a seer, and to convey his perceptions within the guise of a dream (Kane 11).
Some scholars believe that dreamer-narrators are merely constructs – that the overlap between visionary and poet is artificial, a challenge to the reader to dare to connect the two. Fourteenth-century poets, says Kane, might have enjoyed the riddle they posed by seeming to place themselves within their tales. Chaucer openly does so just once in his life: within The House of Fame, naming its dreamer-writer “Geffrey” (Fame 729, De Looze 130) However, “Geffrey” takes a nonchalant stance toward his seeming self-revelation, claiming not to care if any “wight have my name in honde” (1877). The very openness of this seems intended to disarm the reader. It creates, as de Looze calls such intentional enigmas, “a hide-and-seek relationship of identity between author and narrator” (130).
I would add that the enigma is purposefully designed to protect the poet’s neck. Imparting moral observations would satisfy Chaucer’s artistic and spiritual need to do meaningful work – which might include subtle venting and vengeance -- but couching them in dreams and allegories would keep him alive and employed. As Geffrey himself says in The House of Fame, “For also browke I wel myn hed, / Ther may be under godlyhed / Kevered many a shrewed vice”(273-5).
Besides the dreamer-narrator’s name and occupation as a writer, there is a multitude of other indications that “Geffrey” might be a smarting, nervous Chaucer, seeking immortality while trying to circumvent the effects of embarrassing gossip, keeping in mind how thickly his bread was buttered – and on which side.
* * *
In The House of Fame, the first correlation to Chaucer’s real life is the dreamer’s comparison of himself to a tired pilgrim who has been to the shrine of Saint Leonard seeking relief -- “To make lythe of that was hard” (119). Since Saint Leonard is the patron saint of captives, the saint has been construed by some as the one who would release an unhappy spouse from a marital prison (Robinson 889). While divorce was not necessarily Chaucer’s desire, the reference to constraint is clear. It makes sense to connect that constraint to love when the dreamer comes to a glass temple – a fragile, transparent edifice owned by Venus herself (128-31). Venus is recognized by the dreamer from her portrait, in which she was adorned with a white and red garland of roses (134-5) – the well-known symbols of the Houses of York and Lancaster, the latter being John de Gaunt’s line.
In this exposed, reflective location, surrounded by icons of love and politics , the dreamer retells ancient, well-known tales of betrayal for over three hundred lines (142-467). Beginning with a fugitive “In Itayle, with ful moche pyne” (147) the poem relates the sad tale of Dido, who killed herself after being betrayed by someone she thought she could trust:
Allas! what harm doth apparence,
Whan hit is fals in existence! (265-66)
At the end of the retrospective, Geffrey exits the glass temple through a gate and finds himself in a wasteland – “For al the feld nas but of sond” (486). This barren environment, visited on the tenth of December (111), is in sharp contrast to the opulent, sheer temple (not to mention all the green gardens and “fresshe Mays” in which Chaucer has set so many of his tales). I would argue that this environment depicts Chaucer’s life outside, or “without,” the glass temple of Love and Lancaster. Without the duke’s patronage, the poet’s life would be bleak. One ought not to look a gift horse in the mouth -- yet the dreamer prays to know Truth. “O Crist," thoughte I, "that art in blysse, / Fro fantome and illusion / Me save!" (492-4).
In answer to his prayer, Geffrey sees an enormous eagle approaching in the skies, larger than he has ever seen, shining with a golden lustre so bright it resembles a brand new sun (interestingly, spelled sonne) (503-7). The eagle was Jupiter’s bird, the king of birds for the king of the gods. The eagle was also displayed on the Lancaster badge (Beltz 136) – not as obvious a reference as would have been the lion displayed on the Lancaster shield, but subtlety was, I am arguing, the poet’s intent. Here Chaucer is evoking a complimentary image of his patron, John de Gaunt, another royal of great wealth who soars above the barren, common land.
The eagle swoops down toward Geffrey, who “a-roume [exposed] was in the feld” (540), snatching him up “with hys grymme pawes stronge” and “hys sharpe nayles longe” (542-3), and rising into the sky so sharply that Geffrey is stunned by the ascent and his fear. This seems an obvious metaphor for Gaunt’s having taken Chaucer under his wing and up to new social and career heights, an idea that gains credence when the eagle speaks in a man’s voice and says
[. . .] "Awak!
And be not agast so, for shame!"
And called me tho by my name,
And for I shulde the bet abreyde,
Me mette "Awak," to me he seyde
Ryght in the same vois and stevene
That useth oon I koude nevene;
And with that vois, soth for to seyn,
My mynde cam to me ageyn,
For hyt was goodly seyd to me,
So nas hyt never wont to be. (556-566)
Though this passage is sometimes seen as an allusion to the possibly “shrewish” nature of Philippa as the “oon I coude nevene,” it makes more sense that the gentle reassurance, spoken by a powerful golden eagle soaring at lofty heights, is actually coming from Chaucer’s powerful patron. He begins to console Geffrey in a teasing way, as male friends often do – in fact, he specifically says “I am your friend:”
And sayde twyes, "Seynte Marye,
Thou art noyous for to carye!
And nothyng nedeth it, pardee,
For also wis God helpe me,
As thou noon harm shalt have of this;
And this caas that betyd the is,
Is for thy lore and for thy prow.
Let see! Darst thou yet loke now?
Be ful assured, boldely,
I am thy frend." (573-82)
At one point, sensing Geffrey’s fear at being cast into a constellation by the gods, the eagle assures him that Jove is not near – that the raptor will “dar wel putte the out of doute -- / To make of the as yet a sterre” (599-600). Here Jove may represent King Edward III, Gaunt’s father; regardless, the eagle is the poet’s at-hand protector -- the one who is making him a star of a different kind, elevating him to visionary heights, and helping him secure immortality.
The dreamer’s identification with Chaucer strengthens as the eagle goes on to laud Geffrey’s diligence as a writer of books, songs, and ditties of love. Jove considers it a sign of humility and virtue, he says, that Geffrey spends all his time writing – though he sometimes praises people Jove chooses not to advance, and spends so much time reading, reasoning, and writing in isolation that he gets no news, either from far or near. He lives like a hermit (though, the eagle cracks, not one who honors abstinence). To enlighten the ostrich-like Geffrey and compensate him for his goodness, Jove has asked the eagle to take him to the House of Fame (607-671). There Geffrey will hear truth and lies about love – love of all kinds, including “discordes, moo jelousies, / Mo murmures and moo novelries, / And moo dissymulacions” (685-7).
These are the kinds of love and love-related fallout with which Chaucer might have already been uncomfortably familiar, though his alter ego has just been portrayed as clueless. In the poem, Geffrey is overwhelmed by the subject matter, but his avian deliverer points out that everything tends to its natural – that is to say, its proper – place:
"Geffrey, thou wost ryght wel this,
That every kyndely thyng that is
Hath a kyndely stede ther he
May best in hyt conserved be;
Unto which place every thyng
Thorgh his kyndely enclynyng
Moveth for to come to
Whan that hyt is awey therfro;
As thus: loo, thou maist alday se
That any thing that hevy be,
As stoon, or led, or thyng of wighte,
And bere hyt never so hye on highte,
Lat goo thyn hand, hit falleth doun. (729-741)
Metaphorically, Gaunt seems to be reminding Chaucer that it is in the natural order of things that he should attain these heights – that he should disregard what people might say, because, after all, speech, whether “Lowd or pryvee, foul or fair, / In his substauce yv but air” (777-78). Never mind the gossip, he might be saying; “For as flaumbe ys but lyghted smoke, / Ryght soo soun ys air ybroke” (769-70). Spoken words are simply broken air. To put it more crudely (not at all beyond Chaucer), gossipers are just breaking wind.
The real-life subject of the gossip at issue, Gaunt’s illegitimate offspring, might be embedded within the eagle’s next parable, an example of an action’s wide-ranging consequences:
[. . .] for yf that thow
Throwe on water now a stoon,
Wel wost thou hyt wol make anoon
A litel roundell as a sercle,
Paraunter brod as a covercle;
And ryght anoon thow shalt see wel
That whel wol cause another whel,
And that the thridde, and so forth, brother,
Every sercle causynge other
Wydder than hymselve was;
And thus fro roundel to compas,
Ech aboute other goynge
Causeth of othres sterynge
And multiplyinge ever moo (788-801)
The significance of this vignette, I believe, is trifold. First, the image of the circles and the specific use of the word “wheel” might well be a reference to Philippa; her maiden name was Rouet, which is French for wheel, and the Rouet heraldic shield is three golden wheels against a scarlet field. “That whel wol cause another whel” can be read as a reference to birth and reproduction. Second, the concentric rings might represent the noble blood that flows in Thomas Chaucer’s and his descendants’ veins – “Every sercle causynge other / Wydder than hymselve was” – they will forever carry the genes, if not the title, of John de Gaunt. Third, the image demonstrates the effects of gossip, the way stories expand and spread from a central point; still, he is saying, it is only broken water; as with the broken air of speech, it is not to be taken too seriously. In fact, the eagle spends a great deal of time assuaging Geffrey’s fear, assuring him he will not be harmed, and warning him not to lose his wits: “Loo, ys it not a gret myschaunce / To lete a fool han governaunce / Of thing that he can not demeyne?" (957-9).
Much can be read into the rest of this very long poem, during which Geffrey is borne aloft to the House of Fame, another sheer edifice like Venus’s temple – this one is constructed of ice, even more transitory than love. Fame, Chaucer is saying, is fragile and fleeting; it distorts and amplifies reality. At its icy heights, one’s name is best preserved in shadow. Chaucer’s architectural description of this mighty, beautiful castle might reveal literal and lineal connections to the House of Lancaster (“long castle”); the structure is referred to as a castle no fewer than seven times. In its entry, statues of numerous writers merit a hundred lines of Chaucer’s verse (1419-1519).
Within the House, eight different groups seek fame from the queen, and she capriciously grants it, or not, with the aid of Aeolus, who accordingly blows his trumpets of Renown or Slander. Significantly, the final, eighth group consists of betrayers – those “That had ydoon the trayterye, / The harm, the grettest wikkednesse / That any herte kouth. gesse” (1813-15); Chaucer has come full circle (or “wheel”) to his opening tale of betrayal. The Queen of Fame grants this group fame in the form of slander. That betrayers suffer a heritage of infamy may very well be Chaucer’s gratifying, though fictional, vengeance.
Because Geffrey claims he has not seen anything he did not already know, he is led to a house in a valley beside the castle – in real life, perhaps, this might represent Chaucer’s natural realm. There he sees the arboreal, open-woven, cage-like House of Chance. He spies “his” eagle on a rock nearby, and asks him to wait while he investigates the wonders of the place. The eagle, here at his most Gaunt-like, points out how much Geffrey needs him – that he would be lost without him in the House of Chance. The bird’s mission, he repeats, is to bring the poet relief from heaviness and distress:
As I have seyd, wol the solace
Fynally with these thinges,
Unkouthe syghtes and tydynges,
To passe with thyn hevynesse,
Such routhe hath he of thy distresse,
That thou suffrest debonairly --
And wost thyselven outtirly
Disesperat of alle blys,
Syth that Fortune hath mad amys
The [fruit] of al thyn hertys reste
Languisshe and eke in poynt to breste --
That he, thrugh hys myghty merite,
Wol do the an ese, al be hyt lyte, (2008-20)
In this poem, Chaucer is reminding himself that Gaunt is God’s gift to him, and not to be criticized. As he sees in the House, millions have been lost to Chance, to gossip and rumor, to mingled half-truths and falsehoods, to secrecy and lies. In fact, the spreading of false stories consumes over a hundred lines, a strong indication of its importance to Chaucer (2034-2154). Then, after a frenetic piling up of gossipers into a noisy heap, the poem comes to a sudden end:
Atte laste y saugh a man,
Which that y [nevene] nat ne kan;
But he semed for to be
A man of gret auctorite. . . . (2155-8)
Most scholars believe Chaucer never finished the poem, but this scene of “gossipus interruptus” seems to me the perfect ending. Gossip and its potential malignant effects are cut short by the powerful presence of a male authority figure, a “man of gret auctorite” whom I believe to be Sir John de Gaunt himself, down from the skies with two feet on the floor and the power to protect his Geffrey – that is, Geoffrey Chaucer.
In The House of Fame, the embarrassed but still-grateful poet is telling himself what the eagle has been telling the dreamer all along: Get over the betrayals and your injured pride; ignore the impotent gossip-mongers. Instead, appreciate the view, protection, and immortality Sir John de Gaunt provides. In writing this poem, the poet was able to do exactly that. For from safely within this complex dream-vision, the new moralist, Geoffrey Chaucer, has spoken his mind.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beltz, George Frederick. Memorials of the Order of the Garter. London: William Pickering,
1841: 136.
De Looze, Laurence. Pseudo-Autobiography in the Fourteenth Century. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1997.
Gardner, John. The Life and Times of Chaucer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
Kane, George. Chaucer and Langland: Historical and Textual Approaches. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989.
Kolve, V.A. Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1984.
Lerer, Seth, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer. New York: Yale University Press,m 2007.
Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992: 135-8.
Piehler, Paul. The Visionary Landscape. London: Edward Arnold, 1971.
Robinson, F.N., ed. The Poetical Works of Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933.
Sayce, Olive. “Chaucer’s ‘Retractions’: The Conclusion of the Canterbury Tales and its Place in
Literary Tradition.” Medium Aevum, 40 (1971): 230-48
Tatlock, John Strong Perry. Chaucer’s ‘Retractions’. Michigan: University of Michigan Press,
reprinted from the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxviii,
4, 1913: 522-28.
Wurtele, Douglas. “The Penitence of Geoffrey Chaucer.” Viator, 11 (1980): 335-59.
San Jose State University | Bonita M. Cox Award for Outstanding Achievement in Classical & Medieval Studies (2017)
I thought that the potential/probable illegitimacy of Thomas Chaucer must have come out somewhere in Chaucer’s writings – most logically The House of Fame, because of its enigmatic nature and post-Italy timing--and, having just spent five years researching hidden messages in a dream vision of Spenser’s, I was eager to dig up more However, I quickly sympathized with Geffrey’s feeling of being overwhelmed. There’s a mountain of research yet to be done to adequately make this point (or prove it wrong in the process). There is some limited existing scholarship on the notion of Gaunt-in-Fame; in time, I would like to do this subject better justice.
For most of Geoffrey Chaucer’s life, the man who controlled the poet’s status, lifestyle, and purse was King Edward’s son, Sir John de Gaunt, the Duke of Lancaster. Yet the relationship between Chaucer and his patron was not one-sided but symbiotic. Chaucerians have generally viewed the two men as good friends, not because they were eventually related by marriage, but because at a deeper level they seemed cut from the very same cloth. “They were brilliant,” John Gardner says, “in many ways like-minded men, intellectually daring, scrupulously honorable, at least by their own medieval code, and emotionally useful to each other” (157). Gaunt gave Chaucer the social status and respectability that middle-class Englishmen craved, and Chaucer gave Gaunt a kind of inclusion in the artistic, meditative life that suited his nature but not his role. Being a patron and collector was as close as the duke could get to being an artist himself, and he would have taken a vicarious pleasure in Chaucer’s rise and evolution as an artist. In fact it was Gaunt who, by helping Chaucer get assignments abroad, helped him transcend his role as a mere court poet (Kane 20).
It was while he was in Italy “on the king’s business” in the 1370s that Chaucer was exposed to the rich twining of theological and moral messages in the Divinia Commedia. The poems of Petrarch and Boccaccio, too, set powerful examples for him of technical prowess and spiritual subject matter. Such poetry was in sharp contrast to Chaucer’s existing works (Lerer 36). As John Gower writes, “in the floures of his youthe” Chaucer had filled the world full “Of ditees and of songes gladye” (Confessio Amantis VIII. 2943, 45). Those poems were certainly among the “worldy vanitees” of which he would eventually repent, in the retraction he placed at the end of the Parson’s Tale (Pearsall 63). After his exposure to Italian writers, his emulation of French poetry, most importantly of its emphasis on fine amour, would take a decided turn.
Chaucer returned to England no longer content to exalt such relatively trivial, unrealistic topics as courtly love. In fact, in subsequent compositions such as Troilus and Criseyde, courtly love is reduced to a destructive fantasy (Kane 21). No longer would he compose relatively frivolous ditties for the amusement of the nobles. He had seen the righteousness of using one’s art to influence moral behavior, and he had witnessed firsthand the adoration and acclaim that doing so had brought to Dante Aligheri (Kane 21). Chaucer came home with a new view of himself as a poet with a moralist role -- and with the hope of achieving immorality.
The House of Fame, a clear emulation of Dante, reflects both this view and this hope (Lerer 36). Thought to have been written in 1378, this poem does more, however, than comment on the capricious, tenuous nature of fame, and preserve the poet’s actual name within its lines. I believe The House of Fame expresses Chaucer’s mixed feelings about his benefactor, Sir John de Gaunt – feelings of both gratitude and embarrassment.
The basis for gratitude is obvious. Gaunt, as stated earlier, was a respected nobleman whose generous patronage that had given Chaucer the opportunity and circumstances to elevate in society and evolve as an artist. The embarrassment might have arisen because of Gaunt’s sexual indiscretions. Certain behaviors that Chaucer might have brushed off or resigned himself to before might have sat with him differently after his Italian sojourn. In his new role as a moralist, he was at least conflicted about Gaunt’s licentious behavior. For despite the duke’s many fine qualities and traits, he was known for his multiple mistresses – and if the rumors are true, his liaisons included Philippa, Chaucer’s wife.
There is some strong evidence that in 1366, John de Gaunt had impregnated the unmarried Philippa Rouet, who was one of his wife’s damoiselles, before he departed for Spain that September, and that he had asked his attendant Chaucer to do him the favor of making Philippa an honest woman (Gardner 153). If true, Elizabeth Chaucer, ostensibly the daughter of Philippa and Chaucer born about nine months after their marriage, would indeed have been Gaunt’s child (154). Furthermore, there is arguable evidence that Philippa’s relationship with Gaunt continued past her wedding. Scholars have long debated the possibility that Thomas Chaucer, most likely born in 1373, was fathered by Gaunt, whose then-mistress (later wife) was Philippa’s sister Katherine. In other words, Gaunt might have been making love to both sisters at once.
The arguments about Thomas’s paternity have calcified into two camps. The first, for which Russell Krauss is an oft-quoted spokesman, traces its claim for Thomas’s bastardry to sixteenth-century Speght: “Yet some hold opinion (but I know not upon what grounds) that Thomas Chaucer was not the sonne of Geoffrey Chaucer, but rather some kinsman of his whom hee brought up” (Gardner 158). In support of this statement are cited Thomas’s usage and alteration of family crests, his apparent disinheritance by his mother’s Rouet line, his inexplicable receipt of generous grants from Gaunt, and various less convincing arguments (158-60). The opposing camp, fronted by esteemed scholars Furnivall, Tyrwhitt, Kirk, Manly, and Lounsbury, casts a dubious glance on the possibility that Gaunt fathered Thomas. Their objections include Gascoigne’s contemporary reference to Thomas as Geoffrey’s son, and the fact, posited by Manly, that Gaunt’s marriage to Katherine Swynford after an affair with her sister would have violated canonical law. However, such a violation, as Gardner points out, probably would not have concerned philanderers (161). It is beyond the scope of this paper to further probe this question, which has been examined extensively elsewhere; suffice it to say that there is reasonable evidence that Gaunt had a hand – or rather, something else – in the the conception of one or both children. As Gardner summarizes, “however we may wish to deny the rumor, the whole business looks exceedingly suspect” (156).
Despite this probability, both the poet and his patron are generally regarded as honorable men who were good to and for each other, and for Chaucer, that relationship may have taken precedence over any other. Regardless of his feelings, it would certainly not have behooved him to make overt observations of his patron’s immoral behavior. There is no question that gossip about such behavior on the part of his patron and wife would have caused him, at the least, embarrassment -- and that gossip might have threatened his hard-won social status. As an injured man, a social climber, and an upstart moralist, Chaucer would have felt compelled to write something on the subject. He would have done so surreptitiously, however. He was far too wise to bite the feeding hand.
Chaucer is well known for depicting people of all ranks and roles in moral dilemmas or immoral situations, whether of their own making or imposed by circumstance. Sometimes his depictions are candid and frank, as in most of the Canterbury Tales. Sometimes they are obscured in dream visions, or dreams within tales, wherein his narrator “envisions” subtly didactic scenes from which readers might draw conclusions. The House of Fame is one such poem, more than two thousand lines of a vision about the illusory, fragile nature of fame – or so, at first glance, it seems.
Dream visions, though, are often incredibly complex, and packed with hidden ironies (Kane 20). The literary type, refined in the fourteenth century, was neither fiction, nor history, nor an argument for history within fiction; it allowed instead, as George Kane says, “a vehicle for subjects ranging from the amatory or social, to satire, through eschatology” (Kane 8). The dreamer was implicitly connected to the poet – not only in verifiable factual ways, but sometimes even in name, if cryptographically (Kane 8-9). This vehicle allowed the poet to insert himself as a seer, and to convey his perceptions within the guise of a dream (Kane 11).
Some scholars believe that dreamer-narrators are merely constructs – that the overlap between visionary and poet is artificial, a challenge to the reader to dare to connect the two. Fourteenth-century poets, says Kane, might have enjoyed the riddle they posed by seeming to place themselves within their tales. Chaucer openly does so just once in his life: within The House of Fame, naming its dreamer-writer “Geffrey” (Fame 729, De Looze 130) However, “Geffrey” takes a nonchalant stance toward his seeming self-revelation, claiming not to care if any “wight have my name in honde” (1877). The very openness of this seems intended to disarm the reader. It creates, as de Looze calls such intentional enigmas, “a hide-and-seek relationship of identity between author and narrator” (130).
I would add that the enigma is purposefully designed to protect the poet’s neck. Imparting moral observations would satisfy Chaucer’s artistic and spiritual need to do meaningful work – which might include subtle venting and vengeance -- but couching them in dreams and allegories would keep him alive and employed. As Geffrey himself says in The House of Fame, “For also browke I wel myn hed, / Ther may be under godlyhed / Kevered many a shrewed vice”(273-5).
Besides the dreamer-narrator’s name and occupation as a writer, there is a multitude of other indications that “Geffrey” might be a smarting, nervous Chaucer, seeking immortality while trying to circumvent the effects of embarrassing gossip, keeping in mind how thickly his bread was buttered – and on which side.
* * *
In The House of Fame, the first correlation to Chaucer’s real life is the dreamer’s comparison of himself to a tired pilgrim who has been to the shrine of Saint Leonard seeking relief -- “To make lythe of that was hard” (119). Since Saint Leonard is the patron saint of captives, the saint has been construed by some as the one who would release an unhappy spouse from a marital prison (Robinson 889). While divorce was not necessarily Chaucer’s desire, the reference to constraint is clear. It makes sense to connect that constraint to love when the dreamer comes to a glass temple – a fragile, transparent edifice owned by Venus herself (128-31). Venus is recognized by the dreamer from her portrait, in which she was adorned with a white and red garland of roses (134-5) – the well-known symbols of the Houses of York and Lancaster, the latter being John de Gaunt’s line.
In this exposed, reflective location, surrounded by icons of love and politics , the dreamer retells ancient, well-known tales of betrayal for over three hundred lines (142-467). Beginning with a fugitive “In Itayle, with ful moche pyne” (147) the poem relates the sad tale of Dido, who killed herself after being betrayed by someone she thought she could trust:
Allas! what harm doth apparence,
Whan hit is fals in existence! (265-66)
At the end of the retrospective, Geffrey exits the glass temple through a gate and finds himself in a wasteland – “For al the feld nas but of sond” (486). This barren environment, visited on the tenth of December (111), is in sharp contrast to the opulent, sheer temple (not to mention all the green gardens and “fresshe Mays” in which Chaucer has set so many of his tales). I would argue that this environment depicts Chaucer’s life outside, or “without,” the glass temple of Love and Lancaster. Without the duke’s patronage, the poet’s life would be bleak. One ought not to look a gift horse in the mouth -- yet the dreamer prays to know Truth. “O Crist," thoughte I, "that art in blysse, / Fro fantome and illusion / Me save!" (492-4).
In answer to his prayer, Geffrey sees an enormous eagle approaching in the skies, larger than he has ever seen, shining with a golden lustre so bright it resembles a brand new sun (interestingly, spelled sonne) (503-7). The eagle was Jupiter’s bird, the king of birds for the king of the gods. The eagle was also displayed on the Lancaster badge (Beltz 136) – not as obvious a reference as would have been the lion displayed on the Lancaster shield, but subtlety was, I am arguing, the poet’s intent. Here Chaucer is evoking a complimentary image of his patron, John de Gaunt, another royal of great wealth who soars above the barren, common land.
The eagle swoops down toward Geffrey, who “a-roume [exposed] was in the feld” (540), snatching him up “with hys grymme pawes stronge” and “hys sharpe nayles longe” (542-3), and rising into the sky so sharply that Geffrey is stunned by the ascent and his fear. This seems an obvious metaphor for Gaunt’s having taken Chaucer under his wing and up to new social and career heights, an idea that gains credence when the eagle speaks in a man’s voice and says
[. . .] "Awak!
And be not agast so, for shame!"
And called me tho by my name,
And for I shulde the bet abreyde,
Me mette "Awak," to me he seyde
Ryght in the same vois and stevene
That useth oon I koude nevene;
And with that vois, soth for to seyn,
My mynde cam to me ageyn,
For hyt was goodly seyd to me,
So nas hyt never wont to be. (556-566)
Though this passage is sometimes seen as an allusion to the possibly “shrewish” nature of Philippa as the “oon I coude nevene,” it makes more sense that the gentle reassurance, spoken by a powerful golden eagle soaring at lofty heights, is actually coming from Chaucer’s powerful patron. He begins to console Geffrey in a teasing way, as male friends often do – in fact, he specifically says “I am your friend:”
And sayde twyes, "Seynte Marye,
Thou art noyous for to carye!
And nothyng nedeth it, pardee,
For also wis God helpe me,
As thou noon harm shalt have of this;
And this caas that betyd the is,
Is for thy lore and for thy prow.
Let see! Darst thou yet loke now?
Be ful assured, boldely,
I am thy frend." (573-82)
At one point, sensing Geffrey’s fear at being cast into a constellation by the gods, the eagle assures him that Jove is not near – that the raptor will “dar wel putte the out of doute -- / To make of the as yet a sterre” (599-600). Here Jove may represent King Edward III, Gaunt’s father; regardless, the eagle is the poet’s at-hand protector -- the one who is making him a star of a different kind, elevating him to visionary heights, and helping him secure immortality.
The dreamer’s identification with Chaucer strengthens as the eagle goes on to laud Geffrey’s diligence as a writer of books, songs, and ditties of love. Jove considers it a sign of humility and virtue, he says, that Geffrey spends all his time writing – though he sometimes praises people Jove chooses not to advance, and spends so much time reading, reasoning, and writing in isolation that he gets no news, either from far or near. He lives like a hermit (though, the eagle cracks, not one who honors abstinence). To enlighten the ostrich-like Geffrey and compensate him for his goodness, Jove has asked the eagle to take him to the House of Fame (607-671). There Geffrey will hear truth and lies about love – love of all kinds, including “discordes, moo jelousies, / Mo murmures and moo novelries, / And moo dissymulacions” (685-7).
These are the kinds of love and love-related fallout with which Chaucer might have already been uncomfortably familiar, though his alter ego has just been portrayed as clueless. In the poem, Geffrey is overwhelmed by the subject matter, but his avian deliverer points out that everything tends to its natural – that is to say, its proper – place:
"Geffrey, thou wost ryght wel this,
That every kyndely thyng that is
Hath a kyndely stede ther he
May best in hyt conserved be;
Unto which place every thyng
Thorgh his kyndely enclynyng
Moveth for to come to
Whan that hyt is awey therfro;
As thus: loo, thou maist alday se
That any thing that hevy be,
As stoon, or led, or thyng of wighte,
And bere hyt never so hye on highte,
Lat goo thyn hand, hit falleth doun. (729-741)
Metaphorically, Gaunt seems to be reminding Chaucer that it is in the natural order of things that he should attain these heights – that he should disregard what people might say, because, after all, speech, whether “Lowd or pryvee, foul or fair, / In his substauce yv but air” (777-78). Never mind the gossip, he might be saying; “For as flaumbe ys but lyghted smoke, / Ryght soo soun ys air ybroke” (769-70). Spoken words are simply broken air. To put it more crudely (not at all beyond Chaucer), gossipers are just breaking wind.
The real-life subject of the gossip at issue, Gaunt’s illegitimate offspring, might be embedded within the eagle’s next parable, an example of an action’s wide-ranging consequences:
[. . .] for yf that thow
Throwe on water now a stoon,
Wel wost thou hyt wol make anoon
A litel roundell as a sercle,
Paraunter brod as a covercle;
And ryght anoon thow shalt see wel
That whel wol cause another whel,
And that the thridde, and so forth, brother,
Every sercle causynge other
Wydder than hymselve was;
And thus fro roundel to compas,
Ech aboute other goynge
Causeth of othres sterynge
And multiplyinge ever moo (788-801)
The significance of this vignette, I believe, is trifold. First, the image of the circles and the specific use of the word “wheel” might well be a reference to Philippa; her maiden name was Rouet, which is French for wheel, and the Rouet heraldic shield is three golden wheels against a scarlet field. “That whel wol cause another whel” can be read as a reference to birth and reproduction. Second, the concentric rings might represent the noble blood that flows in Thomas Chaucer’s and his descendants’ veins – “Every sercle causynge other / Wydder than hymselve was” – they will forever carry the genes, if not the title, of John de Gaunt. Third, the image demonstrates the effects of gossip, the way stories expand and spread from a central point; still, he is saying, it is only broken water; as with the broken air of speech, it is not to be taken too seriously. In fact, the eagle spends a great deal of time assuaging Geffrey’s fear, assuring him he will not be harmed, and warning him not to lose his wits: “Loo, ys it not a gret myschaunce / To lete a fool han governaunce / Of thing that he can not demeyne?" (957-9).
Much can be read into the rest of this very long poem, during which Geffrey is borne aloft to the House of Fame, another sheer edifice like Venus’s temple – this one is constructed of ice, even more transitory than love. Fame, Chaucer is saying, is fragile and fleeting; it distorts and amplifies reality. At its icy heights, one’s name is best preserved in shadow. Chaucer’s architectural description of this mighty, beautiful castle might reveal literal and lineal connections to the House of Lancaster (“long castle”); the structure is referred to as a castle no fewer than seven times. In its entry, statues of numerous writers merit a hundred lines of Chaucer’s verse (1419-1519).
Within the House, eight different groups seek fame from the queen, and she capriciously grants it, or not, with the aid of Aeolus, who accordingly blows his trumpets of Renown or Slander. Significantly, the final, eighth group consists of betrayers – those “That had ydoon the trayterye, / The harm, the grettest wikkednesse / That any herte kouth. gesse” (1813-15); Chaucer has come full circle (or “wheel”) to his opening tale of betrayal. The Queen of Fame grants this group fame in the form of slander. That betrayers suffer a heritage of infamy may very well be Chaucer’s gratifying, though fictional, vengeance.
Because Geffrey claims he has not seen anything he did not already know, he is led to a house in a valley beside the castle – in real life, perhaps, this might represent Chaucer’s natural realm. There he sees the arboreal, open-woven, cage-like House of Chance. He spies “his” eagle on a rock nearby, and asks him to wait while he investigates the wonders of the place. The eagle, here at his most Gaunt-like, points out how much Geffrey needs him – that he would be lost without him in the House of Chance. The bird’s mission, he repeats, is to bring the poet relief from heaviness and distress:
As I have seyd, wol the solace
Fynally with these thinges,
Unkouthe syghtes and tydynges,
To passe with thyn hevynesse,
Such routhe hath he of thy distresse,
That thou suffrest debonairly --
And wost thyselven outtirly
Disesperat of alle blys,
Syth that Fortune hath mad amys
The [fruit] of al thyn hertys reste
Languisshe and eke in poynt to breste --
That he, thrugh hys myghty merite,
Wol do the an ese, al be hyt lyte, (2008-20)
In this poem, Chaucer is reminding himself that Gaunt is God’s gift to him, and not to be criticized. As he sees in the House, millions have been lost to Chance, to gossip and rumor, to mingled half-truths and falsehoods, to secrecy and lies. In fact, the spreading of false stories consumes over a hundred lines, a strong indication of its importance to Chaucer (2034-2154). Then, after a frenetic piling up of gossipers into a noisy heap, the poem comes to a sudden end:
Atte laste y saugh a man,
Which that y [nevene] nat ne kan;
But he semed for to be
A man of gret auctorite. . . . (2155-8)
Most scholars believe Chaucer never finished the poem, but this scene of “gossipus interruptus” seems to me the perfect ending. Gossip and its potential malignant effects are cut short by the powerful presence of a male authority figure, a “man of gret auctorite” whom I believe to be Sir John de Gaunt himself, down from the skies with two feet on the floor and the power to protect his Geffrey – that is, Geoffrey Chaucer.
In The House of Fame, the embarrassed but still-grateful poet is telling himself what the eagle has been telling the dreamer all along: Get over the betrayals and your injured pride; ignore the impotent gossip-mongers. Instead, appreciate the view, protection, and immortality Sir John de Gaunt provides. In writing this poem, the poet was able to do exactly that. For from safely within this complex dream-vision, the new moralist, Geoffrey Chaucer, has spoken his mind.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Beltz, George Frederick. Memorials of the Order of the Garter. London: William Pickering,
1841: 136.
De Looze, Laurence. Pseudo-Autobiography in the Fourteenth Century. Gainesville: University
Press of Florida, 1997.
Gardner, John. The Life and Times of Chaucer. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1977.
Kane, George. Chaucer and Langland: Historical and Textual Approaches. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989.
Kolve, V.A. Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 1984.
Lerer, Seth, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer. New York: Yale University Press,m 2007.
Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1992: 135-8.
Piehler, Paul. The Visionary Landscape. London: Edward Arnold, 1971.
Robinson, F.N., ed. The Poetical Works of Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1933.
Sayce, Olive. “Chaucer’s ‘Retractions’: The Conclusion of the Canterbury Tales and its Place in
Literary Tradition.” Medium Aevum, 40 (1971): 230-48
Tatlock, John Strong Perry. Chaucer’s ‘Retractions’. Michigan: University of Michigan Press,
reprinted from the Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, xxviii,
4, 1913: 522-28.
Wurtele, Douglas. “The Penitence of Geoffrey Chaucer.” Viator, 11 (1980): 335-59.