The author in the study: self-representation as reader and writer in the medieval and early modern periods

Abstract

Debates about the authenticity of an autobiographical self; and what this means, have preoccupied scholars since the days of New Criticism. It has become an axiom that medieval writers use personae and write within such an elaborate and comprehensive system of literary conventions that it is impossible to identify the voice of the real author, even when he or she is speaking as an 'I,' and impossible to differentiate the voice of the author from that of the narrator or, more broadly, the voice of the author/narrator from the text itself. I will begin with literary descriptions of selfhood from Augustine through Abelard, Dante, Petrarch, and Chaucer.