Chaucer's "Book of Fame": An Exposition of "The House of Fame."

Description: Reads HF as Chaucer's "vindication of poetry," even though he comically proposes to eschew it. Identifies the various echoes of classical and medieval sources in HF, particularly Virgil's "Aeneid," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudianus," and Dante's "Divine Comedy," arguing that Chaucer manipulates them self-consciously as part of assertion of the value of poetry, depicted ironically in the structure and activities of Fame's palace. Treats the Dreamer's quest as a search for a new kind of poetry, reflected in the hurly-burly of the house of Rumor, as, perhaps, Chaucer's declaration of a new subject matter.