Poetry and Authority: Chaucer, Vernacular Fable and the Role of Readers in Fifteenth-Century England

This study argues that the critical response to textual authority in Chaucer's fables helped to negotiate scholastic poetics in fifteenth-century England. Drawing on a selection of late medieval sources, the book traces the re-assessment of textual authority in the face of the growing importance of an empowered vernacular readership.