Venus in Fame’s Palace:
Visions of Fame at the end of Medieval Literature

by Rosann Simeroth

What’s a writer? Critics have contended this for many years. Is definitely an author truly a person voice, expressing the minds of the unique self? Or perhaps is a writer a one collects tales, cultural attitudes, and shapes them right into a text? And just how has got the title of author altered with time? These questions pose unique challenges for scholars from the Dark Ages. Much of what’s known as medieval literature includes tales which are freely adapted, which are related to anonymous or originate from folklore and scripture. The merging of the dental tradition having a manuscript tradition contributes to this complexity.

Some solutions regarding early configurations of authorship lie within an area that is not fully investigated: poems on fame within the late dark ages. This research will cope with such poems, particularly allegorical journeys toward fame and recognition. I conclude these poems present ideas about medieval authorship which are a lot more complex compared to picture of a medieval self as less ‘I’ than icon help with by cultural historians Michel Foucault, Terry Eagleton, and Stephen Greenblatt. These allegorical visions of fame form a very sophisticated dialogue where the author positively questions background and literary traditions.

Two striking features recur with these poetic visions: the palace of fame that houses prominent women and men in the author’s past, and also the female guides who appear on the way. After surveying the controversy over fame in classical ancient times, I examine this medieval landscape of fame in Chapter II.

Metaphors of creating, writing, and memory help formulate this landscape. The castles of fame built during these allegories are associated with spatially-arranged memory systems which were popular at the end of medieval rhetorical handbooks and pedagogical practice. Mary Carruthers, author from the Book of Memory. describes these memory systems because the architectural mnemonic. As Carruthers explains, memory systems that characterize the late Dark Ages frequently illustrate structures and rooms as metaphorical containers for cultural material dedicated to memory. I demonstrate the ways that these castles of fame become malleable containers and play spaces that permit each author to provide a problematic literary past and also to discuss the title of author.

The castles of fame produced by Chaucer, Gawin Douglas and Christine de Pizan contain figures of cultural importance for example Old Testament prophets, epic poets, and figures that personify courtly benefits. Because the poets create these structures room by room, they, as narrators, discuss fame and also the status of those cultural government bodies. These imaginary structures portray the poets’ visions of competing vernacular, academic, and Scriptural traditions. Their visions might be satiric or apocalyptic always they’re informed with a drive to amend cultural material based on the individual poet’s ideals.

Thoroughly associated with these castles would be the female figures who appear as guides on the wayespecially Venus, Dido, and woman Fame.

In Chapter III, I demonstrate how these female figures open crucial points of intersection from a broader idea of cultural authority and also the individual author’s self-definition and worldview. While using disciplines of rhetorical studies and feminist critique, I survey early medieval visions by which women help form authorial identity, including Andreas Cappellanus’ Palace of affection from On Love (c. 1174), Nicole de Margival’s Le Dit en Panthere d’Amours (c. 1300), and Jean Froissart’s Temple d’Onnour (c. 1363). Then i map the transformation of those female proctors from conventional courtly ladies to visions of Venus, Dido, and woman Fame.

Geoffrey Chaucer’s House of Fame highlights these female figures in this particular essential poetic commentary on fame and individual authority. In their vision, Chaucer’s narrator Geffrey walks the halls of Venus’ temple, viewing a number of portraits that demonstrate the storyline from the Roman epic, the Aeneid. As Geffrey interprets each portrait, he relates their own form of the Aeneid. Geffrey’s retelling from the Aeneid paints Aeneas like a treacherous deserter of Dido and Carthage, as opposed to the founding father of a brand new Roman race. Venus and Dido summon at any height anxiety within Geffrey, and, by extension, Chaucer, to construct their own satiric and apocalyptic commentary on the thought of a reliable western literary past.

Even though the surmised composition date of Chaucer’s House of Fame is 1379 and Gawin Douglas’ Palice of Honor is really a Scottish sixteenth-century text (first edition dated 1553), I do a comparison in Chapter IV to chart how Gawin Douglas turns from Venus and also the commitment of authorial fame to find courtly recognition. This significant shift toward political positioning marks many allegories in the early modern period, the most known being Spenser’s Faerie Queene. Unlike Chaucer, Gawin of Douglas was created into an aristocratic Scottish family, and preferments came easily for him. Actually, Gawin ends his Palice of Honor by dedicating it to the Richt Nobill and Illuster Prince James the Feird (James IV), King of Scottis. Gawin’s royalist sympathies over-shadow the need to understand more about authorship within the Palice of Honor. The writer’s new identity here’s servant towards the crown. In addition, this shift prompts Gawin to reduce Venus, who presides over producing fiction. Actually, Mary is elevated over Venusa Mary who may be read as Mary, Queen of Scotsand Gawin portrays themself like a loyal follower of James who finally ascends in the palace of recognition in to the heavenly city described in Revelations.

I conclude with Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de Cite plusieurs Dames [It from the Town of Ladies ] (1405), a text which realizes another essential shift with these visions of fame. Particularly, I example the way a lady covering fame is different from the representations of ladies and fame that precede her. Christine accumulates her pen and builds a brand new citya town by which she transforms tales of famous women in the medieval misogynist tradition. Christine deliberately veers from linking Venus with fame: Venus, Dido, and woman Fame are substituted with the feminine figures of Reason, Rectitude, and Justiceall advice the author quickly but through regarding her new city. These allegorical female figures don’t provoke authorial uncertainty rather, for Christine, they end up being the standards by which other authors should be measured and amended.

Ultimately, it is indeed my hope this study will give you an authentic and significant refiguring of what’s known as the self and also the feminine in medieval authorship. Many ideas concerning the self, of gender, as well as competing versions in historyOrfictional traditions which are hotly debated today were formulated throughout the Dark Ages. It is essential to the current knowledge of these debates that scholars constantly have a fresh see this dynamic era.

Statement of Future Plans and Goals

Simply, put, my future goal will be a professor of medieval literature in a college or college that promotes excellence in teaching in addition to research, and fosters strong ties using the surrounding community. Like a coming back student, I held the twin careers of library assistant and music performer while finishing my B.A. degree. My college literature courses were constantly exciting and galvanizing. Because of my writing ability and sophistication contributions, several professors encouraged me to pursue graduate studies. I had been given the difference in British Award inside my alma mater, California Condition College, Fullertonand award that’s provided to one graduating British major each year.

Throughout the newbie of my graduate studies at CGU, I signed up for Professor Constance Jordan’s seminar on narrative and historiography in medieval and early modern literature. This is where I made a decision to pursue medieval studies. I had been fascinated with the intersection of myth, folklore, Christianity, and Arabic philosophy within works in the Dark Ages. I grew to become intrigued by medieval philosophy, and it was struck because when medieval debates within the nature of truth dispute exactly the same fundamental points that deconstructionists and essentialists wrangle over today. I additionally observed a lot of free have fun with concepts of gender, writing, and cultural exchange. First and foremost, I fell deeply in love with that old languagesusing the stanza patterns and sounds of medieval poetry. As my studies in medieval literature progressed, I recognized exactly what a dynamic era the Dark Ages have been when compared with my earlier, oversimplified concept of an oppressive church authority dictating all areas of medieval existence.

From here on, I signed up for other medieval courses with Professors Constance Jordan and Peter Allen also, I’ve audited or sitting in on courses trained by Professors Rob Hanna (UCR) and Dick Barnes. I presented several papers from all of these workshops at conferences from the Off-shore Ancient and Modern Literature Association (PAMLAfree airline Coast branch from the Modern Language Association, formerly referred to as PAPC), The Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association, and also the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. I chaired the Chaucer session from the 1993 PAMLA meeting in the College of Washington, San antonio and that i was asked to chair a unique session titled Epistemology and Question in Medieval and Renaissance Narrative for that 1994 PAMLA meeting in Bay Area. I authored a magazine review for ladies’s Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal with an important Speculum publication, Studying Medieval Women (1993, erectile dysfunction. Nancy Partner). I’ve just completed overview of Demons, Women, and Jews: Glare from the Other in Medieval Sermon Tales. by Joan Youthful Gregg (1997, Condition College of recent You are able to Press), that we am now delivering out for publication. In 1997, I replaced a medieval professor at CSU Fullerton who had been on sabbatical. This permitted me to achieve experience teaching Chaucer, a medieval literature survey course, as well as an British literature survey course. On their own evaluations, my students spoke highly of my understanding, classroom attitude, and enthusiasm. I had been also capable of working with M.A. students who have been entering medieval studies.

The CGU Dissertation Grant would let me continue my development like a scholar and finish my dissertation by May of 1999. I’d make use of the money to scale back on my small teaching schedule at CSU Fullerton, thus creating more additional time to create and investigate in the Huntington Library. The grant would also let me take more time writing the dissertation this summer time rather of working temporary jobs or teaching labor-intensive summer time courses.

So far as the way forward for my dissertation subject is worried, I intend to turn the work right into a book. My subject on fame and authorship at the end of medieval dream-visions engages important and current scholarly concerns, for example gender and poetics, in addition to ideas concerning the self within the Dark Ages. I additionally extend this subject in to the early modern period: I trace the introduction of these ideas in to the courtly patronage systems of early modern England. Professor Constance Jordan has pointed out that my dissertation provides a cutting-edge method to consider poetic tradition. Professor John Ganim (UCR), an esteemed Chaucer scholar, has agreed to be my dissertation committee and supports further publications of the subject too.

Additionally, my dissertation will prepare me to create my very own college courses, like the concept of the town in Virgil, Augustine, and Dante the medieval dream-vision and medieval women authors and literary tradition. These courses could be easily mix-listed with religion, philosophy, and history programs. Overall, the conclusion of my dissertation work would place me well going toward being a professor of medieval literaturea existence that will let me still educate, write, and explore ideas and patterns of cultural expression.

Budget of Believed Expenses for 1998-1999

Tuition (Doctorate Study = $865/semester