Imagination and the Cosmic Consciousness in Chaucer’s The House of Fame

Abstract

The aim of this article is to situate Chaucer’s The House of Fame in the tradition of exercising the self as practiced by ancient philosophers and theorized by Pierre Hadot. It shows that Chaucer’s poem contains echoes of an ancient exercise referred to as ‘the view from above’, which engages the faculties of the imagination in order to enable an individual to review their life and to situate it in the context of universal nature. The poet’s creative use of the ancient motif of the celestial flight, I will argue, distances him from those writers who use the theme to develop the contemptus mundi topos and affiliates him with those ancient thinkers who, like Marcus Aurelius, employ it to turn their attention to their own self, which may be achieved via meditations on the identity and homogeneity of all things (homoeides). It is Chaucer’s use of the view from above topos that vindicates the role of imagination by showing how it contributes to self-knowledge, that is, to an awareness of where one stands.