Everyone, especially during tax season, is familiar with the phrase “intentionally left blank.”
Without this helpful phrase, a blank page received from the bank or from the IRS would be puzzling.
Alas, Chaucer gives us no such indication of his intentions at the end of his poem, The House of Fame.
Not only scholars believe that The House of Fame is unfinished; it certainly appears unfinished to most readers.
But I contend that the poem was left unfinished intentionally—in other words, that the poem is finished.
Only a few lines, or at most a page or two, are missing. Why would Chaucer polish his entire poem, and neglect to finish it when he was so close to being done?
Some would argue that it was typical of Chaucer to abandon his poems. The Legend of Good Women and the Canterbury Tales are unfinished, too. But those poems are missing hundreds of pages, not a mere few lines; and we know why he abandoned those works, and we don’t know why he abandoned The House of Fame.
That is, we don’t know why he abandoned it, unless he abandoned it intentionally. Then we know why he did.
The poem ends with the appearance of a “man of gret auctorite.”
Who is this man of great authority? Is he Christ? Satan? Morpheus the god of sleep? A messenger from the king? The king himself? A minor official? A personification of love? Boethius? The Constable Marshal of the Christmas revels at the Inner Temple?
All of these possibilities have been suggested. I contend that Chaucer intended them all.
By never disclosing the man’s identity, Chaucer broadens the interpretive field. The ambiguity allows the poem to mean many different things. The poem can be understood in a multitude of interesting ways that contradict one another. This is beautiful and interesting. And Chaucer surely saw that it was beautiful and interesting, just as it was—unfinished.
And so, he finished the poem by leaving it unfinished intentionally.
* Orlando Bartro is the author of Toward Two Words, a comical & surreal novel about a man who finds yet another woman he never knew, usually available at Amazon for $4.91.