Chaucer and The Temples of Fame

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter is principally focused on the versions of The House of Fame by Alexander Pope and Jane Brereton. These renderings are examined both for their own sakes and for the light they cast on the overall theme of the present book: the changing fame and fortunes of Chaucer’s poetry. It is argued that Pope’s and Brereton’s poems, and the interrelations between them, suggest that, in poetry, true filial inheritance is displayed not merely by reproduction of one’s predecessors, but in producing work that is as innovative, extraordinary, and original as theirs. Both Pope and Brereton, it is argued, found in Chaucer an example of what poetry might do that was directly applicable to their immediate needs as aspiring poets. The chapter ends with some illustrations (taken from the later poetry of Pope) of the ways in which small fragments of Chaucerian verse worked their way into the imaginations of later poets, and reappeared in unexpected circumstances.