'As Writ Myn Auctour Called Lollius': Divine and Authorial Omnipotence in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Author / Editor
Utz, Richard J.

Title
'As Writ Myn Auctour Called Lollius': Divine and Authorial Omnipotence in Chaucer's 'Troilus and Criseyde'

Published
Hugo Keiper, Richard J. Utz, and Cristoph Bode, eds. Nominalism and Literary Discourse: New Perspectives (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 123-44.

Description
Surveys the critical history of "Lollius"--Chaucer's putative source for TC--and argues that the invention poses a poetic analogy to the absolute power of the nominalist God. By creating Lollius, Chaucer makes his general audience believe in the intuitive cognition of a non-existent power. Informed readers such as Gower and Strode recognized the invention as a parodic indicator of poetic self-consciousness.

Alternative Title
Nominalism and Literary Discourse: New Perspectives.

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde.