Original Article ‘Mind like wickerwork’: The neuroplastic aesthetics of Chaucer’s House of Tidings Ashby Kinch Department of English, University of Montana, Montana Abstract This article argues that the wicker enclosure named the House of Tidings in Chaucer’s House of Fame provides a powerful intuitive expression in figurative terms of the concept of neuroplasticity, or the functional capability of the brain to reorganize its neural circuitry in response to an external stimulus or a deficit in cognitive function. In this figurative space, Chaucer explores the capacity of mind to adapt to new experience, from the mental world of reading texts to the whirling world of social experience. postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies (2012) 3, 302–314. doi:10.1057/pmed.2012.20 Mind like wickerwork, crisscrossed Baskets that hold nothing, gatherings That almost but not quite come together. Though they may have, in the beginning, With each side of the gap In the tender skull knitting itself to the other, What governments, what grand cathedrals we have made And then abandoned. Patricia Goedicke, ‘Baskets That Hold Nothing’ r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 2040-5960 postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies Vol. 3, 3, 302–314 www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/