The emergence of the English author

The historical construction of literary authorship has long been of particular interest to literary scholars. Yet an important aspect of the historical emergence of the author, the literary biography or "life of the poet" has received scant attention. In The emergence of the English author, Kevin Pask studies the early life-narratives of five now-canonical English poets: Geoffrey Chaucer, Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, John Donne and John Milton. By attending to the changing shape of the lives of these poets, Pask produces a history of the developing conception of literary authorship in England from the late medieval period to the end of the eighteenth century, and offers a long-term sociohistorical account of literary production. His book is the first full-scale history of the cultural construction of literary authority in early modern England.

First sentence: The gulf between the medieval Latin auctor and the modern English author is one which the history of Geoffrey Chaucer's posthumous "authorization," perhaps uniquely in English literature, negotiates.

Year

1996

Language

English

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Editions

1

Pages

228

ISBN

9780521020923

Data source: Wikidata