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5 The Missing Tidings of the House of Fame Critics generally assume that Chaucer had a plan in mind for the missing tidings of House of Fame but neglected to put his plan into verse. This chapter advances a very different suggestion, that Chaucer never planned for House of Fame anything beyond what is now extant. Compared with other Chaucerian poems that are obviously unfinished, Fame displays none of their marks of incompleteness. In Anelida and Arcite, to take an the clearest example, after an elaborate complaint (211–350) by the title lady, the poem returns to the seven-line stanza with which it began. Although this is the last stanza in the poem, it promises to describe a temple “That shapen was as ye shal after here” (357). Chaucer undoubtedly had more in mind for this poem. Similarly, the Legend of Good Women breaks off in the middle of a sentence announcing more to follow: “This tale is seyd for this conclusioun–” (2723). The Canterbury Tales, replete with evidence of its unfinished state, leaves the connections between some tales unwritten or unclear. It uses feminine pronouns to refer to its male narrator in the prologue to the Shipman’s Tale, perhaps because the tale was originally intended for the Wife of Bath. And it assigns no tale at all to a Yeoman, a Plowman, two Priests, and five guildsmen , though all the pilgrims agreed to tell two tales on the journey to Canterbury and two tales returning.1 By contrast, the House of Fame leaves no unfulfilled promises. True, the narrator describes with enthusiasm a man who seems to be a great authority; true also that this man stands In a corner of the halle, Ther men of love-tydynges tolde. (2142–43) But these words do not claim the man in question will recite one of these love tidings as “ye shal after here.” Nor does the poem taken as a whole leave any loose ends, since every theme introduced comes to its own logical conclusion. If the great authority had been given some slight thing to do or say— 1 / Chapter  Wrothe he quod, “To youre bokes y sey, Er Fame lyte wol rede of Geffrey.” —the completeness of the poem would never have been doubted. The poem, nevertheless, gives a strange feeling of incompleteness—not, perhaps, the kind of incompleteness The Riverside Chaucer suggests by appending the rubric “[unfinished].” Rather, one has the strong impression the author had finished working on the poem and intentionally left it as we now have it. Several suspicions, hints, and logical inferences contribute to this impression, rather than any single compelling argument. Take for example Chaucer’s own reference to the poem “the book . . . of Fame” (CT X.1086). This does not seem to be the wording Chaucer would have chosen if he were describing this poem according to the principles that led to his other references. Or, to rephrase the point, if in listing his other poems he had followed the procedure used here, we should not now have the familiar names by which we know these poems. To match “the book . . . of Fame” we should now have the Book of Melancholy, the Book of Nature, and the Book of Alceste. Chaucer apparently chose “the book of the XXV. Ladies; the book of the Duchesse; [and] the book of Seint Valentynes day of the Parlement of Briddes” (CT X.1086) because they pointed to the most important part of each poem, the last part, for which everything else had been preparing. If Fame had been named thus, we should at least have had the House of Rumor, certainly not a place twice rejected by the narrator.2 Or, if not the House of Rumor, then perhaps the Book of Tidings. Almost anything would seem more apt than “the book . . . of Fame.” This title does, however, adequately identify the poem, provided we understand that Chaucer’s usual method of referring to one of his poems was not available because the most important activity to take place in the House of Rumor would not be included. The last few lines of the poem have a familiar ring that suggests a parallel with what we have already seen in two previous dream visions. During the generalized account of the persons and activities of the House of Rumor, no warning is given of a particularized commotion in one corner of the structure , a rush toward a man of authority announced by the narrator...

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