"And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame

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dc.contributor.authorLamond, Murrayen_ZA
dc.date.accessioned2016-10-10T14:55:25Z
dc.date.available2016-10-10T14:55:25Z
dc.date.issued1992en_ZA
dc.descriptionBibliography: pages 74-83.en_ZA
dc.description.abstractThe thesis attempts to show the complexity of the literary challenge which Chaucer undertook in the House of Fame. Firstly, I establish a sense of the tradition of criticism inspired by the poem, and then show the ramifications of the choice of medium. The poem is a "dream vision", a genre which took the contentious truth-claims and unsettled status of dreams, and used it as the foundation for a poetics which concentrated on the relation of the conscious subject to truth. This is investigated in an extended metaphor, where the experience of the unconscious subject in a purely linguistic world is tested, and from the experiment, conclusions may be drawn concerning the human condition with regard to all knowledge. I briefly examine the divergent positions of the Divine Comedy and the Romance of the Rose, situating Chaucer in the debt of both, but philosophically in the French camp. The House of Fame I see as a "deconstruction" of any position of certainty in rational or mystical epistemology, which marks out a secular sphere of influence for literature in the manner of Ovid. The second half of the thesis is largely a close reading of the poem itself, which attempts to trace the development of these "skeptical" ideas in literary form, showing how, by appealing to the whole European literary inheritance, the force of the argument is enhanced in subtlety, range and wit. Love, Nature, and Fame, the three topoi of the three books, are each in turn unsettled, as too are the three "ways of knowing" - perception, reason, and memory. The poem does not "end" in the traditional mode of closure largely because it has made such a notion an impossible ideal, beyond the reach of the unaided human mind.en_ZA
dc.identifier.apacitationLamond, M. (1992). <i>"And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame</i>. (Thesis). University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature. Retrieved from http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22108en_ZA
dc.identifier.chicagocitationLamond, Murray. <i>""And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame."</i> Thesis., University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22108en_ZA
dc.identifier.citationLamond, M. 1992. "And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame. University of Cape Town.en_ZA
dc.identifier.ris TY - Thesis / Dissertation AU - Lamond, Murray AB - The thesis attempts to show the complexity of the literary challenge which Chaucer undertook in the House of Fame. Firstly, I establish a sense of the tradition of criticism inspired by the poem, and then show the ramifications of the choice of medium. The poem is a "dream vision", a genre which took the contentious truth-claims and unsettled status of dreams, and used it as the foundation for a poetics which concentrated on the relation of the conscious subject to truth. This is investigated in an extended metaphor, where the experience of the unconscious subject in a purely linguistic world is tested, and from the experiment, conclusions may be drawn concerning the human condition with regard to all knowledge. I briefly examine the divergent positions of the Divine Comedy and the Romance of the Rose, situating Chaucer in the debt of both, but philosophically in the French camp. The House of Fame I see as a "deconstruction" of any position of certainty in rational or mystical epistemology, which marks out a secular sphere of influence for literature in the manner of Ovid. The second half of the thesis is largely a close reading of the poem itself, which attempts to trace the development of these "skeptical" ideas in literary form, showing how, by appealing to the whole European literary inheritance, the force of the argument is enhanced in subtlety, range and wit. Love, Nature, and Fame, the three topoi of the three books, are each in turn unsettled, as too are the three "ways of knowing" - perception, reason, and memory. The poem does not "end" in the traditional mode of closure largely because it has made such a notion an impossible ideal, beyond the reach of the unaided human mind. DA - 1992 DB - OpenUCT DP - University of Cape Town LK - https://open.uct.ac.za PB - University of Cape Town PY - 1992 T1 - "And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame TI - "And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame UR - http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22108 ER - en_ZA
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/11427/22108
dc.identifier.vancouvercitationLamond M. "And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fame. [Thesis]. University of Cape Town ,Faculty of Humanities ,Department of English Language and Literature, 1992 [cited yyyy month dd]. Available from: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/22108en_ZA
dc.language.isoengen_ZA
dc.publisher.departmentDepartment of English Language and Literatureen_ZA
dc.publisher.facultyFaculty of Humanitiesen_ZA
dc.publisher.institutionUniversity of Cape Town
dc.subject.otherEnglish Language and Literatureen_ZA
dc.title"And everych cried 'What thing is that?'" : a reading of Chaucer's House of fameen_ZA
dc.typeMaster Thesis
dc.type.qualificationlevelMasters
dc.type.qualificationnameMAen_ZA
uct.type.filetypeText
uct.type.filetypeImage
uct.type.publicationResearchen_ZA
uct.type.resourceThesisen_ZA
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