Chaucer's 'House of Fame' and the Poetics of Inflation

Description: Argues that Chaucer's concerns in HF are metalinguistic by drawing an analogy between verbal inflation (high style) and monetary inflation (which was rampant in Chaucer's day). Both words and coins are arbitrary signs and mediums of exchange; moreover, words, like coins, are "struck" ('aer percussus'). Chaucer shows that manipulations of language, like manipulations in the value of currency, are a form of tyranny.