ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the ways in which modern scholars of Geoffrey Chaucer have understood and envisioned Chaucer's audience. It traces the narrative of the changing understanding of the concept of "audience" over the course of the twentieth century, and evaluates the effect of differing ideas about Chaucer's audience on Chaucerian scholarship. An interest in audience and reception is so pervasive in Chaucer's writings that it seems crucial to an understanding of Chaucer's ideas about stories, story-telling, and writing. The book explains the changes in ideas about Chaucer's audience and in Chaucer criticism as a whole, both in terms of chronological development and in terms of underlying theoretical assumptions. It presents the notion of "audience function", in the same way that Michel Foucault uses the idea of the "author function".
