ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that when Pope rendered anew Chaucer’s poem on the topos of fame, he aimed thereby also to suggest a translatio imperii. He sought to imply that in imitating Chaucer he was, at the same time, proving himself no mean descendant of the man whom Dryden had called ‘the father of English poetry’. Reconstruction of Chaucer’s The House of Fame as The Temple of Fame, that is to say,would emphasise his consciousness of his English poetic lineage, put forward his personal reflections on the nature of fame via engagement with Chaucer’s and advance his own progress towards fame.
