Alan of Lille's <i>Anticlaudianus</i> as Intertext in Chaucer's <i>House of Fame</i>

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Alan of Lille's Anticlaudianus as Intertext in Chaucer's House of Fame Sarah Powrie When scholars consider Alan of Lille's influence on Chaucer's works, they often point to the goddess Nature in the Parliament of Fowls. Much like the goddess that Alan depicts in his Complaint of Nature, Chaucer's Nature in the Parliament is "the vicaire of the almyghty Lord" (379) who is responsible for ensuring the continuity of species and preserving concord in the created order.1 As Chaucer introduces the lady Nature, he acknowledges Alan (316), indicating that the goddess is making a guest appearance in his English dream vision. This literary gesture prompted George Economou to assert that it would be "impossible or foolhardy" to study the Parliament without consideringthis twelfth-century source.2 [End Page 246] Chaucer also acknowledges Alan of Lille in his House of Fame. Clutched in the talons of a squawking eagle, the narrator "Geffrey" compares his own sublunary excursion to the Neoplatonic ascent of the soul featured in Alan's Anticlaudianus (986). In this case, the reference to Alan appears calculated to distance Chaucer's comic flight from the philosophical quest for truth found in the twelfth-century allegory. Chaucer's turbulent journey guided by a garrulous eagle is most often interpreted to be an elaborate joke parodying such lofty aspirations.3 The playful spirit of the House of Fame distinguishes it from the Anticlaudianus; yet, this difference has in fact concealed the remarkable number of shared concerns uniting the two works. Each text is self-consciously literary, considering the operation of language, the nature of literary production, and the struggle for hermeneutical control. Each narrative is a semiotic experiment that creatively plays with paradoxes and equivocations in order to test language as a container of meaning or a maze of polyvalent potential. Each author self-identifies with the journey undertaken by the protagonist. Each work investigates the sources of literary authority and anticipates its own reception among an imaged readership. Not only do both texts muse on these literary concerns; the sequence of their interrogations unfolds following the same logic and order. The House of Fame introduces its hero Geffrey reflecting on the Aeneid, which the poem represents in an ekphrasis. Departing from the structural confines of this tradition, the hero flies into the uncharted skies of a vernacular philosophical epic, in which he investigates the structure of language and the origins of [End Page 247] narrative. Likewise, Alan's Anticlaudianus begins with an ambivalent homage to the Latin literary tradition represented in ekphrasis. Nature commissions Prudence with a metaphysical journey leading her into the supercelestial reaches to witness the divine artificer engaged in creative activity. Prudence's intellectual quest tests the borders of thought and expression, and its metaphysical/metapoetic quality shares much with Geffrey's investigation of natural and literary causes. Finally, each narrative concludes with a reflection upon the forces of Fortune or Fame, and so implicitly looks toward its own literary afterlife. Though parallel in narrative structure, the poems are philosophically opposed, issuing different statements about the operation of narrative and hermeneutical authority. Arguably, Chaucer was intrigued by the allegory's self-reflective quality but skeptical of its poetic theory. Alan claims to create a transcendent poetics that will uplift the reader morally and spiritually. In making these claims, Alan establishes himself as a theological or vatic authority with hermeneutical control over his text. In the House of Fame Chaucer initiates a dialogue with Alan's text, challenging not only its spiritual aspirations but its assertion of authorial control over textual meaning. By redirecting the allegorical journey of the mind to the House of Fame, Chaucer asserts that poetry speaks of culture, not of divine truth. It is within the context of an interpreting community that a text achieves its creative fruition, not within the abstracted space of the author's mental designs. The House of Fame represents Chaucer's literary reformulation of Alan's Anticlaudianus, in which Chaucer issues his own statement about the nature of literary production and hermeneutical authority.4 Given that the Anticlaudianus is less familiar to most audiences and that my own interpretation differs from standard accounts, a...