Chaucer's House of Fame: The Poetics of Skeptical Fideism

by Sheila Delany

  On its original publication this classic title made sense of a difficult poem for the first time and brought that poem to the center of a concern with the nature of tradition, textuality, and language that is current today.  The book forces late-medieval philosophy out of the closet and into a relation with literature, and it validates the use of contemporary methods and sensibility in literary criticism.  In Sheila Delany's view, House of Fame portrays the ambiguity of old or new communication, with skeptical fideism as the means of transcending ambiguity.  

148 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1972

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the seminal book to know for anyone writing on Chaucer's House of Fame. The being said, its age can be strongly felt. And, while I do think there is value to Delany's overarching argument, several of the minor claims are solely founded on speculations about what Chaucer "must have known," and this long list of assumptions should be approached with a great deal of care.