Books appear in virtually all of Chaucer's poems, referred to in passing, part of the staging of the scenes and action, constantly invoked as arbiters of status, of moral orientation and authority. Almost 150 references to books occur in The Canterbury Tales in stories as varied as the Miller's, the Friar's, the Shipman's (where books refer to account books), the Merchant's tale, and of course in the Wife of Bath's Prologue. They are consistently mentioned in the Troilus and in the Legend of Good Women, where books are invoked as sources, both of literary authority and as narrative guides. In the dream visions Chaucer writes of books in ways that are both casually incidental, as in the opening of the Book of the Duchess, and earnest, as in the Prologue to the Legend. Chaucer's poetry grows out of his profound love of books. Celebrated historically for his realism, he found his sources and his subjects largely in books. His writing consistently testifies to a sense of the vitality and the power of books.

That Chaucer was learned is beyond doubt; even when he jests about his delight in books, behind his mirth one sees the habits of a lifetime of pleasure and devotion to the book as an object of vertu. In this chapter I want to place Chaucer's love of books and learning within a wider historical context than is usually proposed, to see him in relation to a particular element of court culture during the reign of Edward III – the early humanism, particularly the bibliophilia, of Richard de Bury and his circle.