Poetic License: Authority and Authorship in Medieval and Renaissance Contexts

Author / Editor
Miller, Jacqueline T.

Title
Poetic License: Authority and Authorship in Medieval and Renaissance Contexts

Published
New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Description
Investigates the "interaction between literary authority and authorship" and "how writers negotiate the related demands for creative autonomy and authoritative sanction." The dream vision is a form "generated by the poet's search for but failure to find a reliable authoritative model."
The shifting character of the dreamer-poet of HF permits Chaucer to examine "the nature of the poet's position in relation to his text" and to show that "no authority can maintain its status or offer an unassailable system" to justify an author's art. The goddess Nature, authority figure of PF, also fails as an authority.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.
House of Fame.
Parliament of Fowls.