ABSTRACT
Geoffrey Chaucer’s interest in the influence of economic change on social relationships is not only reflected in the predominance of middle class pilgrims in the General Prologue. It is also reflected in his ethical and artistic concern with the instability of value throughout The Canterbury Tales. The society that Chaucer represents in The Canterbury Tales is the product of a century of economic change and upheaval. Nicholas Oresme introduced a monetary theory advocating the stable value of the coin into a world whose social values had been rendered unstable by money itself. The artisans and tradesmen associated with the burgeoning cloth industry amassed greater personal wealth. If money had obscured social value, it had gone even farther toward obscuring moral value. In a world in which monetary fluidity has created social fluidity, the definition of “degree” itself becomes problematic.
