Type of Document	Thesis
Author	Beall, Joanna Maria
URN	etd-06272003-141919
Title	Chaucer's Sublime Philosophy in the House of Fame
Degree	Master of Arts
Department	English, Department of
Advisory Committee	Advisor Name Title David F. Johnson Committee Chair Bruce Boehrer Committee Member Eugene J. Crook Committee Member
Keywords	Chaucer House of Fame
Date of Defense	2003-01-01
Availability	restricted
Abstract This thesis considers The House of Fame as an allegory in which the dreamer’s quest to write love poetry masks a pilgrimage towards Truth: through Neo-Platonic and Christian views of Fall, Redemption, and Judgment. The analysis treats these concepts as sublime themes that Chaucer’s audience would have interpreted in light of the iconography of this enigmatic dream vision. The Introduction expands the argument stated above, and locates the terms of the thesis in their fourteenth century context. This section refers to texts that are generally acknowledged as philosophical sources for Chaucer and his contemporaries, and which inform this study. They include Boethius’s Consolation of Philosophy, and Macrobius’s Commentary on the Dream of Scipio. Sublimity is also defined here in light of the rhetoric described by Longinus’s On the Sublime, and it is argued that Chaucer was familiar with the concept from classical and Neo-Platonic literature, if not from the first century A. D. Greek treatise. The ensuing chapters offer close readings of each book of the poem. Each reading i) identifies the imagery and describes how its significance conflates philosophical, sacred, and secular allusions; ii) analyzes the function of this sublime iconography and rhetoric; and iii) traces the tropological and anagogical progress of the dreamer. The final chapter interprets the ending of the poem in light of the foregoing analyses, and supports the view that Chaucer anticipated that contemporary and future audiences would participate in continuing the narrative through interpretation and performance.
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