In Book I of “House of Fame,” Chaucer recounts the story of Aeneas and Dido using contrasting elements of both Virgil’s Aeneid and Ovid’s Heroides. While the Aeneid presents Aeneas as making a noble sacrifice on behalf of his gods and his people, the Heroides’ recount of Dido’s lament paints Aeneas as a selfish lecher. The uneasy interweaving of these warring texts leaves the dreamer, the reader of the temple walls, unsure of whether to forgive or to condemn Aeneas (426-430, 293-295). The confusion of this reader, highlights the difficulty of relying on often contradictory authoritative texts to legitimize one’s poetry. The dreamer’s experience reading the walls draws attention to the relationship between the poet or artist, the authoritative
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Juno here displays an anti-Trojan bias. We can then see how Venus and Juno could be interpreted as contradicting authoritative texts, based on their respective biases. In the Aeneid, we see these biases at play in regard to the ‘wedding’ of Aeneas and Dido. Juno argues that through a “formal marriage” between Dido and Aeneas, they could “arrange eternal peace” between Carthage and Rome (656). Venus, believing that that would “divert all the future power from Italy/ To Lybia” lessening the glory of her son as founder of Rome (656), argues instead in favour of Aeneas leaving Dido. We can see how these different agendas affect Dido’s perception of the events between her and Aeneas; her believing it to be marriage, and Aeneas to be just sex (663-664). Chaucer alludes to the ambiguity of that encounter in the lines “she/ Becam his love and let him do/ Al that wedding longeth to./ What should I speke more queynte…” (243-245). These lines emphasize the association between sex, and marriage, without directly stating that a marriage took place. When Chaucer defers readers to “Rede Virgile in Eneidos,/ Or the Epistle of Ovyde” (378-379), he never resolves the issue of whether or not it constituted a marriage within his text: in the Aeneid, Aeneas tells Dido that he “Never entered upon the pact of marriage” (664) …show more content…
While the support of the Gods often works in Aeneas’ favour, as in the case of Venus helping win over Dido, it sometimes doesn’t. Chaucer writes: “The book seyth, Mercurie, sauns faile, / Bad him go into Italie, / And leve… Dido and hir faire toune (429-431). In this case we see how the poet is influenced and limited by the literary authority he employs. Virgil describes Aeneas as “duty-bound” (666), the word bound evoking images of subjugation, control or even slavery. In this way we can see how the selection of an authoritative text can constrain a poet’s work and its reception. The poet must stay close enough to the source material to signal to the reader that they are familiar with this text, are cultured and are worth reading. The source text then becomes a lens through which the new work is interpreted. Because of this the poet becomes somewhat bound to the source text and the biases that accompany it. Furthermore, the reader’s attitude towards the original text will undoubtedly shape how they engage with the poet’s
Juno here displays an anti-Trojan bias. We can then see how Venus and Juno could be interpreted as contradicting authoritative texts, based on their respective biases. In the Aeneid, we see these biases at play in regard to the ‘wedding’ of Aeneas and Dido. Juno argues that through a “formal marriage” between Dido and Aeneas, they could “arrange eternal peace” between Carthage and Rome (656). Venus, believing that that would “divert all the future power from Italy/ To Lybia” lessening the glory of her son as founder of Rome (656), argues instead in favour of Aeneas leaving Dido. We can see how these different agendas affect Dido’s perception of the events between her and Aeneas; her believing it to be marriage, and Aeneas to be just sex (663-664). Chaucer alludes to the ambiguity of that encounter in the lines “she/ Becam his love and let him do/ Al that wedding longeth to./ What should I speke more queynte…” (243-245). These lines emphasize the association between sex, and marriage, without directly stating that a marriage took place. When Chaucer defers readers to “Rede Virgile in Eneidos,/ Or the Epistle of Ovyde” (378-379), he never resolves the issue of whether or not it constituted a marriage within his text: in the Aeneid, Aeneas tells Dido that he “Never entered upon the pact of marriage” (664) …show more content…
While the support of the Gods often works in Aeneas’ favour, as in the case of Venus helping win over Dido, it sometimes doesn’t. Chaucer writes: “The book seyth, Mercurie, sauns faile, / Bad him go into Italie, / And leve… Dido and hir faire toune (429-431). In this case we see how the poet is influenced and limited by the literary authority he employs. Virgil describes Aeneas as “duty-bound” (666), the word bound evoking images of subjugation, control or even slavery. In this way we can see how the selection of an authoritative text can constrain a poet’s work and its reception. The poet must stay close enough to the source material to signal to the reader that they are familiar with this text, are cultured and are worth reading. The source text then becomes a lens through which the new work is interpreted. Because of this the poet becomes somewhat bound to the source text and the biases that accompany it. Furthermore, the reader’s attitude towards the original text will undoubtedly shape how they engage with the poet’s