Chaucer in Cyberspace : Medieval Technologies of Memory and The House of Fame

Description: HF provokes reflection on the "historical processes of memorialization." Such concepts as the brass tablet, apostrophe to Thought, inscribed ice block, and House of Rumor are analogous to conceptualizations of personal and cultural memory (history) by Bernard of Clairvaux (stained parchment), Freud ("Mystic Pad"), and Derrida (the "archive"). Concern with gender, subjectivity, authority, and absence indicates the modernity of Chaucer's depictions of memory and encourages recognition of the paradoxical and constitutive relationships between past and present.