THE DIALECTIC OF SILENCE IN CHAUCER S THE HOUSE OF FAME.

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1 1 THE DIALECTIC OF SILENCE IN CHAUCER S THE HOUSE OF FAME. Abstract This essay demonstrates how Chaucer was at the vanguard of modern enlightenment thinking with his robust interrogation in The House of Fame of the medieval Augustinian doctrine of the rhetoric of silence. This doctrine held that, in silence, humans could transcend their finitude, in particular the limits of human language, in order to commune directly with God. This essay highlights Chaucer s challenges to that doctrine in The House of Fame and also demonstrates how Chaucer was specifically challenging Dante s belief in the ability of sublime poetry to exceed human limitation. This essay focuses on the dramatic but confused silence with which the poem closes and argues that Chaucer was deliberately frustrating a traditional reading that would allow that silence to be taken for communion with the divine. The final silence of the poem is suffused with an uncertainty that serves to undermine that latter possibility and to mark it as potentially naïve. In support of this thesis the essay will examine the multiple accounts of silence explored in the body of the poem in order to show that from the outset Chaucer was preparing the ground for the final dramatic critique of silence. The poem itself stutters in fits and starts in a broken poetic register that has often been misinterpreted as poor poetry. By contrast, this essay argues that this is a deliberate trope used to challenge Dante s belief in transcendent poetry and to enact the problem of fallen language. Finally, the essay also charts the central argument of the poem that is grounded in the law of natural enclyning. On this principle all things have a natural end, especially the human, which is limited by its essential finitude which it cannot transcend. By complicating the traditional understanding of silence Chaucer instigated a modern movement in semiotics. Chaucer; Medieval semiotics; Augustine; Doctrine of Charity ; Dante; Silence as a symbol; Silence as a sign; The law of natural enclyning ; Human finitude; Proto-Enlightenment project.

2 2 The House of Fame is a poem, specifically a dream vision, in which Chaucer responds to, and reacts against, medieval theories of language. Such theories were initially shaped by St. Augustine as far back as the Fourth Century in that they specifically identified the flawed nature of human language, such that it is incapable of producing Truth (Jager 51). Thus far, Chaucer is ad idem. However he parts company with the Augustinian model when he interrogates the conventional meaning attributed to silence. Silence was of great significance for Augustine (ibid 94-5); he believed that it was a symbol of the inner word of God (Fyler 6). In his Doctrine of Charity he identified silence as an opportunity for redemption from Original Sin in this life (D.W. Robertson 24). Medieval semiotics thus worked on the premise that with Adam s sin, language had fallen into dissimilitude and had lost its connection with Truth (Fyler 7, 21). Thus it was only in silence that an individual might commune directly with the inner word of God in order to receive redemption. The House of Fame sits, of course, in the shadow of its own silent ending. Generations of readers have interpreted this silence in different ways (Lynch 41), but for the purposes of this essay I want to consider how that silence was often taken as an opportunity to strangle the poem into an orthodox movement of the transcendental experience of God (See for example, D.W. Robertson, on general principles of medieval writing (25, 46) and Sheila Delany, specifically in relation to The House of Fame (41)). This essay will argue however, that the silent ending, and indeed its foreshadowing throughout the poem, is a deliberate trope whereby Chaucer transforms silence from a symbol of transcendence into a sign. In doing this, silence acquires the characteristic of equivocation applicable to all signs, and Chaucer thereby undermines the univocal character of Augustinian silence. This essay suggests that, despite the surface chaos of the poem, Chaucer is following a rigorous line of argument from premise to conclusion. From the initial destabilising miasma of dream theories in Book 1, and a narrator who only once adopts a stable position, Chaucer critiques the instability of language and Truth in the specific context of the essential finitude of the human. He is guided in this pursuit by the law of natural enclyning which when applied to humans requires that we accept our finitude and by implication the finite possibilities of language. It is Chaucer s thesis that we are not naturally inclined to transcend our limits. To this end Chaucer explores several instances of silence throughout the poem to demonstrate its multivalent character and to foreground the climactic dénouement. In this way he demonstrates the signifying nature of silence rather than accepting it as the symbol of transcendence that it

3 3 was for St. Augustine. Ironically, the consequence of accepting the limited capacity of language and its separation from Truth, results also, in silence. The man of greet auctoritee who appears at the end of the poem (2158), is introduced with all the suggestion of his being the prophet or visionary typically anticipated in a dream vision. Yet, he fails to speak. The confusion that this produces makes his silence ambiguous and in making it ambiguous, Chaucer has achieved his purpose of interrogating the univocal character of Augustinian silence. The central tenet of Augustine s linguistic theory is the flawed nature of language and this he attributes directly to Adam s Fall. Language, he said, was implicated in the Fall because Adam s sin produced an abrupt and universal collapse of likeness into unlikeness (Fyler 21) or dissimilitude (7). Fyler identifies the three ways in which this dissimilitude manifests itself, the third of which is central to the concerns of this essay and is the divorce of fallen words from the Truth (21). The Fall then is expressed in the gap that exists between, what we call since Saussure, the signifier and the signified. By this is meant the sliding of meaning, the equivocation of words and the potential for the ill use of language by lying. The human experiences an innate desire to bridge that gap between word and thing, and between words and Truth. But the question that arises is, whether or not that bridging can be achieved in this finite world, and if so, how? It is in answering this important question that Chaucer parts company with Augustine and indeed with his disciple Dante, that other great medieval thinker and greatest poet of the Middle Ages. In the Doctrine of Charity Augustine taught that the punishment of fallen language could be redeemed by a return to the divine silence of the inner word (Mazzeo 192). John Mazzeo explains this theology of silence stating that for Augustine silence was listening to the instruction of the inner teacher (192) and that true rhetoric culminates in silence, in which the mind is in immediate contact with reality (187). Dante too, believed that the gap could be bridged and subscribed to what Mazzeo called Augustine s rhetoric of silence. Dante explored transcendental silence in detail in the Commedia, believing always that the poet can rise to the demands of the sacred poem (Fyler 109). John Fyler highlights Dante s belief that his poetry could transcend human poetry (114) and that he could push language beyond its natural limits (119). The House of Fame is then a direct response to and reaction against the Commedia. In his poem Chaucer presents his own

4 4 investigation of theories of language (Fyler 145), but what is important to recognise is that far from being a bald subversion of Dante as suggested by Fyler (101), or a parody as Robin Kirkpatrick suggests (lxix), The House of Fame raises very modern questions about the possibility of bridging that gap between words and Truth. Silence, which for Augustine and Dante was a symbol of God s unspoken word, became for Chaucer, another signifier, subject to the same hermeneutical practices applicable to all signs. Silence lurks always amid the noise in The House of Fame but significantly each silence has its own character. To consider just a few examples: we learn that the narrator produces his books on love in silence, And, also domb as any stoon / Thou sittest at another booke (656-56). The function of this silence is associated with the creative process. At line 562 the narrator is silent as to the owner of the voice he recognises; elsewhere he refuses to name himself ( ). These silences are voluntary; they possibly point to a refusal of the Adamic role of naming things. The narrator also refuses to name the man of greet auctoritee ( ). The narrator is often close to silent in his engagement with the eagle as when he offers just one monosyllabic answer to all of its questions, Yis (864). Most importantly of course is the silent ending, to which issue we will return once we have followed the line of argument that Chaucer pursues in the poem. From the outset Chaucer bamboozles his reader with multiple theories about dreams and offers nine different names to describe them in Book 1. The purpose of this is to point to the impossibility for language to establish objective truth. The reader feels destabilised and that feeling is intensified by the competing perspectives then offered on the story of Dido and Aeneas. From this unstable opening Chaucer then proceeds to examine the contingent and haphazard nature of fame throughout the rest of the poem. Sheila Delany, in her book, Chaucer s The House of Fame. The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism, has a very helpful account of the term fame. She says that, Fame is to be understood as the body of traditional knowledge that confronted the educated fourteenth century reader (3). It is possible to take it even further however and to consider fame as a metonym for Truth. The narrator stumbles through the poem in fits and starts failing to engage properly in its project. He is as disinterested in the eagle s lecturing (872-3) as he is in the happenings in the Houses of Fame and Rumour. The failure of the poem to anchor itself in subject matter and perspective operates to frustrate the reader. But what needs to be appreciated is that this is a deliberate trope by Chaucer. He is ingeniously using the poem itself to enact the problem of fallen language. Its

5 5 stuttering style is not the fault of an inept poet but a brilliant artifice with which Chaucer dramatises his concerns. The broken poetic register of The House of Fame must be seen to be working as hard for Chaucer as Dante s poetic brilliance did for him. Those who clamour for fame in Book 3 vainly subscribe to the idea that fame qua Truth can be attained. We should by now recognise that the poem itself is operating as a sign, pointing to something beyond itself; it is a poetic enactment of the human frustration at the plight of our limitations. The core frustration of the human is its finitude and Chaucer repeatedly points to the limitation of the human intellect: But that our flesh ne hath no might To understonde it aright, For it is warned too derkly - But why the cause is, nought wot I. (49-52) His stuttering narrator frequently expresses limitation; The which, as I can now remembre, / I wol yow tellen every dele (64-5); or I wol now say, if that I can (143). Recognition of this limit normally gives rise to an immediate desire to transcend it; however, the core message of the poem is the impossibility of transcending finitude. To this end, Chaucer shines the spotlight of name on the most important message of the poem, that is, the limit of our kindly enclyning. He causes the eagle to speak extensively about kindly enclyning, that law of nature under which all things are naturally and necessarily drawn to their proper place in the world: Geffrey, thou wost right wel this, That every kindly thing that is, Hath a kindly stede ther he May best in it conserved be; Unto which place every thing, Thurgh his kindly enclyning, Moveth for to come to Whan that is awey therfro; (729-36)

6 6 The same message is repeated frequently; see lines ; ; , noting also that it has the support of Plato, Aristotle and many other scholars (757-60). Several particular instances of the operation of the law are also provided, most particularly the operation of the law of gravity which demonstrates a physical enactment of the principle (737-42). Then, still within the ambit of the eagle s lecture on the law of kindly enclyning Chaucer zones in on speech, that most important human characteristic. The eagle lectures that speech is nothing but broken air (765), which on the same principle finds its way to its proper mansioun, the House of Fame (831). By reducing speech to its most basic aspect, broken air, Chaucer utterly materialises speech and strips it of any spiritual content or potential. Not even the most naïve observer could expect broken air to amount to Truth. Thus, what passes for truth in the House of Fame is completely unstable, with no proper grounding, as a tree is to be found rooted in the earth. The eagle of course commits the worst offence against objectivity by complimenting himself on his proofs; the narrator duly fails to enthuse (853-64). We now understand why the narrator refuses to engage in the project of The House of Fame. Asked if he had come hider to han fame? (1872), he rejects the idea out of hand ( ), emphasising that he did not even come of his own volition but he that me made / To comen hider ( ). As disinterested as he was in what the eagle had to say in Book 1, so too he is disinterested in the search for fame / truth. He stands apart from the melee; I wot myself best how I stonde (1878); he does not subscribe to this haphazard assigning of fame / truth and questions even the possibility of certain knowledge. However of most significance, is that beyond his subjective stance, he does not provide an alternative to the chaos, and it is this fact that points most emphatically to the message of the poem; that objective truth is not available to finite humans. The narrator displays a healthy scepticism for the operation of the House of Fame and what it represents, dedicating his few free minutes to examining the rock from which its walls were made ( ) and the detail of its gate ( ). Chaucer of course understands that he must take his argument to a conclusion. If he has proved that words fail to produce to truth, what are the implications? What else can ensue, but the paradox of silence. Chaucer s silence, then, is of a different character to Augustine s rhetoric of silence and to Dante s silence of the unsayable (Fyler 114); it is the secular silence of simply not knowing. The secular has been mooted throughout the poem, for example, robbing the famed laurel tree

7 7 of its traditional significance at line We see this secularising device most particularly in the House of Fame which hosted a rattle bag of tricksters and illusionists ( ). Chaucer sums them all up with the phrase Al this magyke naturel (1266). By filling the House with charlatans and charmers what else can Chaucer mean by magyke naturel than that there can be a natural or worldly explanation for things that might traditionally have seemed to require a supernatural explanation (Lynch fn1 73). With this, Chaucer must be suggesting that explanations can be found in the natural world as well as, or instead of, in the transcendent world. The point of the apparently clumsy poem is to shock its audience into thinking. Chaucer worked hard to frustrate the expectations of his audience with the intention of prompting in them a questioning frame of mind. Where the Commedia delights in its stunning poetic register, The House of Fame stutters in fits and starts. Why? Because Chaucer is interrogating the claim that superlative poetry could break through the finitude of humanity. Chaucer comically shows that in contrast to Dante who found himself unable to describe the glories of heaven, which Fyler refers to as Dante s topos of inexpressibility (114), Chaucer s narrator simply could not be bothered, Lo, how shulde I now telle al this? / Ne of the halle eek what need is (1341-2) and But it were al too longe to rede (1354). Thus Chaucer s poem is deliberately inferior in order to prompt his audience to think about the implications of our finitude viz the orthodox view of transcendence. Whereas Dante believes that he leads the reader further and beyond the limits of human speech (Fyler 114) Chaucer has deliberately constructed a poem that feels as if it never gets off the ground, either literally or figuratively. The narrator of this dream vision, when offered the chance for a potentially visionary experience, grumbles and disrupts the journey with his heavy body, Thou art noyous for to carie (574). As the narrator flies through the sky on a supposedly visionary journey, his attention stays resolutely with what lies yond adoune (889). He exhibits no interest in potentially prophetic tidyngs, For hard langage and hard matere / Is encombrous for to here (861). Instead of the clarity usually associated with visionary experiences the narrator speaks of fog and the difficulty of seeing anything (908-09). It is safe to say that there was never before a dream vision in which the vision was thwarted by fog. He demystifies even the Milky Way by making it only another run-of-the-mill street in England (937-39). On the approach to the House itself the narrator is more focused on what lies underfoot than on what might be in

8 8 the House of Fame ( ). With all of these tropes Chaucer enacts and dramatizes the worldly nature and focus of humans. He highlights concerns appropriate to humanity and not those of a supernatural nature. Noon other auctour alegge I (314); here Chaucer dramatically announces his break with the long established tradition of citing and relying on authority (Jager 15). He announces not only poetic independence as Delany suggested (26) but intellectual independence too. The whole poem has been an intellectual exercise designed to provoke a questioning mind in his audience. We can say then that Chaucer was at the avant-garde of what Jager describes as the sundering of the earlier medieval synthesis of doctrine and poetry (241) and which Delany more cautiously describes as pluralism (34-5). Chaucer wants to develop in his readers an enquiring mind. The poem is a proto-enlightenment exercise in promoting a questioning of dogma and authority. Why should it be, for example, that Augustine s rhetoric of silence should not be seen to have the same contingent character of all other human experience? Why should it not be questioned along with everything else? In the final lines of the poem when the man of greet auctoritee appears, Chaucer seems to be setting up the reader for a conventional experience of revelation consistent with the genre of the dream vision. It fails to happen. The great man never speaks. Why? It is in our asking why? that the poem achieves its purpose. To recognise this is to recognise the brilliance of Chaucer s project. He used the poem itself to enact and dramatise the problem he wanted to explore. Exposing the ambiguity of silence has been, I suggest, the purpose of the poem. Chaucer very much raises a question mark over the necessarily transcendent nature of silence in medieval semiotics. The great paradox of the poem s ending is that the consequence of questioning Augustinian silence and of accepting our finitude, is, in turn, expressed in silence. The success of the poem lies in its prompting frustration, provoking of questions and transforming the symbol of silence into an equivocal sign.

9 9 WORKS CITED Chaucer, Geoffrey. Ed, Kathryn Lynch. The House of Fame. Dream Visions and Other Poems. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Inc, Print. Delany, Sheila. Chaucer s The House of Fame. The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, Print. Fyler, John. Language and the Declining World in Chaucer, Dante, and Jean de Meun. New York: Cambridge UP, Print Jager, Eric. The Tempter s voice. New York: Cornell UP, Print. Kirkpatrick, Robin, trans. and ed. Inferno. By Dante Alighieri. London: Penguin Classics, Print. Mazzeo, Joseph Anthony. St. Augustine s Rhetoric of Silence. Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol (Apr-Jun 1962): Web. 23/11/2013. < Robertson Jr, D.W. The Doctrine of Charity in Medieval Literary Gardens: A Topical Approach through Symbolism and Allegory. Speculum, Vol (Jan 1951): Web. 23/11/2013. <