The Meaning of 'The House of Fame'

Published: Essays in Honour of Professor Hiroshige Yoshida (Shinozaki Shorin Press, 1980), pp. 47-57.

Description: The narrator of this work, pretending ignorance, is conscious of his position as a poet, and a humorous but skeptical attitude towards utterance. Like a nominalist, he examines everyday speech, which is only "eyr ybroken," from the point of view of "appearance" and "existence," solving their contradiction through the natural reconcilation of "statement" with "deed."; Reprinted in Kanno's Studies in Chaucer's Words (Eihosha, 1996), pp. 162-71.