ABSTRACT
In proposing the replacement of Chaucer by Langland as a generative or initiatory figure for such a history of English vernacular fiction, the author far from suggesting a mere change of statuary in the literary Hous of Fame, while leaving this figurative image of literature itself undisturbed. On the contrary, it is precisely this substitution that enables us to denaturalize the familiar humanist metaphors by which literature as a historical institution has been imagined by traditional literary history, for Chaucer is largely responsible for installing these in our field of vision in the first place. In Chaucer’s usage, those called "poets" are invariably dead, and mostly belong to antiquity, like that convocation of the revered masters of both ancient historical matter and rhetoric named in the conclusion to the Troilus: "Virgile, Ovide, Omer, Lucan and Stace".
