ABSTRACT
Doctor Johnson's judgment of Paradise Lost-"no man ever wished it longer" - applies to a large number of literary works but not to Chaucer's House of Fame, which many readers wish had been longer if only by a few lines. Caxton and Thynne did make it longer. 1 They supplied the conclusion the work seems so sorely to lack, but even they failed to include the information that many readers hope for - the identity of the "man of gret auctorite" and the "love-tydynges" we expect him to bring. In recent years an increasing number of readers have become convinced that Chaucer intended the poem to end as it does now, with the abrupt, unexplained appearance of the "man of gret auctorite," and probably even more agree with F. N. Robinson that the identity of that man and the nature of his tidings are now beyond conjecture.2 Yet the problem remains to tease and in some ways to delight the reader. Kittredge wrote, "I am glad the House of Fame is unfinished, for this gives me a chance to guess at the story that should conclude it. " 3 He added that he had a very pretty theory of his own,
which he prudently refused to reveal. I too am glad that the House of Fame is unfinished, and I too have a theory, which, lacking Kittredge's prudence, I here reveal: the House of Fame is unfinished because that is what Chaucer intended; he fails to identify the "man of gret auctorite" and to specify the "love-tydynges" that he brings because his audience already knew what those tidings were, and that must have been part of the fun in Chaucer's most fun-filled poem.
