Dream Interpretation
The House of Fame is an example of a popular genre of poetry known as the dream vision. The work is structured entirely within the framework of a dream the narrator had and is relating to the reader. Everything which occurs in this narrative poem is actually just the actions occurring in the narrator's dream. It is never presented as having actually occurred in reality. The thematic point is that the narrator conveys the events as if they really did happen in the sense of presenting the dream as something which can be interpreted logically and applied to real life outside the dream. This poem and dream vision poetry, in general, can thus be viewed in one way as the prototype for modern-day psychological dream interpretation in which the illogic of dreams can be made rational through interpretation.
The Irrationality of Fame
The primary theme explored in the poem relative to the title is the arbitrary irrationality of fame. When the goddess Fame arrives, she begins deciding which writers will enjoy fame and success and which will be forgotten forever in the darkness away from the spotlight. Her decisions are utterly random and often unfair. The narrator notes that this process of meting out fame is completely irrational and without any application of logic. The narrator is taken aback and astounded by the complete lack of fairness with which the decision is made to grant fame or infamy or a complete lack of either.
Disunity
Chaucer left this work uncompleted. As an unfinished work, interpretation is limited to only what is actually in the text. What is left of the narrative is one that is disjointed in structure and content. The lack of clearly defined unity among the various sections of the poem can therefore be analyzed within the context of the theme. The lack of actual thematic unity between the sections can be applied to the overall structure to suggest a thematic exploration of the randomness of existence. The middle section of the poem is comic in nature, placing it in juxtaposition with the more serious content of the first and third sections. The juxtaposition of the comic and serious content of the poem ties to the irrational nature of fame. Thus the entire structure of the unfinished poem can be interpreted thematically as commentary on the randomness of fame is applicable to the creative process itself.
