In a post last month I mentioned how I’d been reading Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Book of the Duchess, and how it kicks off with a description of insomnia that felt on target for me 600 years later. But back in the fourteenth century people probably had a lot of the same problems with sleep as we do. Or maybe they had it worse. In any case, Chaucer was describing the sort of experience that everyone, even today, can relate to.

This month I was reading The House of Fame and several things about it struck me as very contemporary, albeit in a less direct way. It’s a dream vision, which means it’s set in a fantasy landscape that is meant to be read allegorically, and what’s surprising is that a lot of the allegory still works. The House of Fame itself, for example, is like a giant surveillance/data hub that gathers in everything that is said by anyone all over the world. The narrator is amazed when this system and how it operates is described to him. “I can’t believe it’s possible to hear all that,” he says, “even if Fame had all the informers in a country, and all the spies.” Fame isn’t just a passive recipient in his imagining, but something like a giant AI monitoring all of our social media traffic, and indeed all information on the move everywhere. It seems we’ve always been capable of imagining such a thing, only now it’s not only possible but we can measure and monetize the data that’s harvested on a granular level.

Then there’s the pursuit of fame itself. Today I think we see “fame” and “celebrity” as pretty much being synonyms, and I actually don’t think that’s too far off where things were in Chaucer’s day (the word “celebrity,” in slightly different spelling, may have even first appeared in English in Chaucer’s translation of Boethius). As The House of Fame makes clear, fame is a fickle goddess and you have no idea what’s going to give rise to it, how accurately it will reflect anything real, or how long it will last. Fame could be merit-based, but just as easily be mere rumour or gossip. But people of all types still clamour for it, and in the poem Fame is appealed to by various suitors. One of these struck me as representing the modern notion that any kind of news coverage is good for you. Don’t worry about what’s being said, just count the column inches.

Or at least that used to be the way it was put. Now I don’t think “column inches” means much to anyone. Still, in our attention economy the basic point remains the same: it doesn’t matter what you’re doing to be famous, or go viral, for. The only thing that matters is being famous. Getting attention.

Umberto Eco addressed the subject in Chronicles of a Liquid Society (2016), which came out just before the advent of the influencer:

. . . in an age of great and ceaseless movement, when people leave their villages and lose their sense of home, and the Other is someone with whom they communicate via the Internet, it will seem natural for human beings to seek recognition in other ways, and the village square is replaced by the global audience of the television broadcast, or whatever comes next.

But perhaps not even schoolteachers, or those who take their place, will recall that in that bygone time there was a rigid distinction between being famous and being talked about. Everyone wanted to become famous as the best archer or the finest dancer, but no one wanted to be talked about as the most cuckolded man in the village, for being impotent, or for being a whore. If anything, the whore would claim to be a dancer and the impotent man would make up stories about his gargantuan sexual exploits. In the world of the future, if it is anything like what is going on now, this distinction will be lost. People will do anything to be “seen” and “talked about.” There will be no difference between the fame of the great immunologist and that of the young man who killed his mother with a hatchet, between the great lover and the man who has won the world competition for the shortest penis, between the person who has established a leper colony in central Africa and the man who has most successfully avoided paying his tax. Every little bit will help, just to be seen and recognized the next day by the grocer or the banker.

…

Once this all-seeing Witness [God] has gone, has been taken away, what remains? All that’s left is the eye of society , the eye of the Other, before whom you must reveal yourself so as not to disappear into the black hole of anonymity, into the vortex of oblivion, even at the cost of choosing the role of village idiot who strips down to his underpants and dances on the pub table. Appearance on the television screen is the only substitute for transcendence, and all in all it’s a satisfying substitute. People see themselves, and are seen, in a hereafter, but in return, everyone in that hereafter sees us here, and meanwhile we too are here. Think about it: to be able to enjoy all the advantages of immortality, albeit swift and ephemeral, and at the same time to have a chance of being celebrated in our own homes here, on earth, for our assumption into the Empyrean.

…

At one time the threat to privacy came from gossip. The fear of gossip, or the washing of dirty linen in public, came from the impact it had on our public reputation. But perhaps in the so-called liquid society, where people suffer from lack of identity and values, and have no points of reference, the only means for obtaining social recognition is through “being seen” at all costs.

Anyway, here is the passage from The House of Fame that set off these musings. I think it shows that what Eco had to say about their being an earlier time, specifically the Middle Ages, when fame was something with more exclusively positive connotations, is not entirely accurate. Someone has come to Fame to request being made famous for his villainy. He’s requesting that the horn of slander rather than praise be sounded for him. The Middle English is a little tough in this passage so I’ve followed it up with a shonky translation of my own.

“Lady, lefe and dere
We ben swich folk as ye mowe here.
To tellen al the tale aright,
We ben shrewes, every wight,
And han delyt in wikkednes,
As gode folk han in goodnes;
And Ioye to be knowen shrewes,
And fulle of vyce and wikked thewes;
Wherfor we prayen yow, a-rowe,
That our fame swich be knowe
In alle thing right as hit is.”

“I graunte hit yow,’ quod she, ‘y-wis.
But what art thou that seyst this tale,
That werest on thy hose a pale,
And on thy tipet swiche a belle!”

“Madame,” quod he, “sooth to telle,
I am that ilke shrewe, y-wis,
That brende the temple of Isidis
In Athenes, lo, that citee.”

“And wherfor didest thou so?” quod she.

“By my thrift,” quod he, “madame,
I wolde fayn han had a fame,
As other folk hadde in the toun,
Al-thogh they were of greet renoun
For hir vertu and for hir thewes;
Thoughte I, as greet a fame han shrewes,
Thogh hit be but for shrewednesse,
As gode folk han for goodnesse;
And sith I may not have that oon,
That other nil I noght for-goon.
And for to gette of Fames hyre,
The temple sette I al a-fyre.
Now do our loos be blowen swythe,
As wisly be thou ever blythe.”

‘Gladly,’ quod she; ‘thou Eolus,
Herestow not what they prayen us?’
‘Madame, yis, ful wel,’ quod he,
And I wil trumpen hit, parde!’
And tok his blakke trumpe faste,
And gan to puffen and to blaste,
Til hit was at the worldes ende.

Translation:

“Dear Lady,
We’re the kind of guys you may have heard of.
To tell the truth,
We’re scoundrels, every one of us,
And we take delight in wickedness,
Just as good people do in goodness.
And we like being notorious,
Known for being full of vice and for our wicked deeds.
Which is why we’ve come to ask you
To broadcast our bad reputations,
And show us just as we are.”

“I’ll grant your wish,” she said,
“But who are you to talk like this,
And why are you dressed like a clown?”

“Madame,” he said, “truth to tell,
I’m the same desperado
Who burned the temple of Isis
In the city of Athens.”

“And why’d you do that?” she asked.

“I swear,” he said,
“I did it for the attention,
Just like the others get in that town,
Even though they’re well known
For their virtue and good qualities.
I figured rogues should be as well known
For being wicked
As good people are for being good.
And since I can’t have a good reputation,
Because I won’t stop being bad,
In order to get famous
I set the temple on fire.
Now let everybody know!”