Make Believe: Chaucer's Rationale of Story-telling in 'The House of Fame'

Published: Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, eds. J. R. R. Tolkien: Essays in Memoriam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 204-20.

Description: Chaucer questions the nature of storytelling and the possibility of writing "truth" in imaginative literature. Two words express the divergence of the problem in the Middle Ages: "sooth," which is axiomatic truth (often expressed proverbially); and "trouthe," which refers to personal worth and reliability. "The longer Chaucer went on composing, the more completely he liberated himself from the restriction of a single voice of "trouthe" imposed by oral tradition.; The greater authority his "trouthe" acquired, the more voices he could speak in, so that he came to depend more and more upon his audience for the completion of the "sooth" of his stories."