GEOFFREY CHAUCER OPENSbook 3 of the House of Fame by reminding us that he is a creative writer—and a grouchy, somewhat insecure one at that. Having visited the temple of glass and endured capture by the eagle, the writer–narrator finds himself standing at the foot of a great hill (actually a mass of ice, as he will soon discover) on which the House of Fame is built. Before describing and interpreting what he sees, the eponymous Geffrey issues an invocation that proposes an indissoluble link between the quality of his versification and the wonders he is about to describe:

One of the most revealing moments in this self-consciously writerly passage is the couplet smack in the middle of the invocation: “And that I do no diligence /To shewe craft, but o sentence.” I won't make an effort to show my craft in what follows, that is, but only the sentence or meaning. While referring explicitly to the practice of Chaucer's own literary making, the couplet also conveys a certain degree of self-consciousness on the writer's part about putting his poetical tricks on display.