Domus Dedaly: Rumor, Ricardian England, and the Conception of Poetic Discourse in The House of Fame

Scholars have considered Chaucer's House of Fame mostly as an ars poetica, in which the poet explores new poetic principles and subject matters, while making few attempts to understand the poem in its historical and social contexts. Investigating the nature of the "tidings" that Chaucer suggests as the new source of his poetic inspiration, this paper argues that the house of Rumor was modeled after late fourteenth century English society that experienced increased appetite for news. The political upheaval during the period from the English Rising in 1381 to the reign of Henry IV in the early fifteenth century produced an unprecedented amount of written and oral propaganda. The proliferation of seditious rumors as well as protests and promulgations during this period indicates how seriously medieval society was engaged with the circulation of news. Particularly, the case of John Shirle in 1381 and the legend about the survival of Richard II demonstrate the subversive power of medieval rumor that often served as a political discourse with which people expressed their oppositions to government. Conspicuous in the activities of both the government and late medieval political protestors was the extensive use of writing. The posting of bills in public places continued until the fifteenth century, when such activities became so common and dangerous that the government had to issue proclamations forbidding the circulation of such seditious writings. The number of extant royal proclamations, written protests, and pamphlets demonstrates that already in the late fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the notion of a discursive public space began to emerge. Whether written or orally transmitted, news and rumor circulated in late medieval England, creating a social space in which people shared their political opinions before the introduction of the early modern print culture. In The House of Fame Chaucer calls attention to the subversiveness of rumor, its potential as a public discourse, and the power of written communication in creating truth in order to appropriate these characteristics for his English poems.