Chaucer is regularly named as the father of English poetry, the father of English literature, the father of English literary history, the father of the English language, even the father of England itself. This “myth,” with all these associations, is probably the most foundational one for this book, as it sits behind many of the conceptions and emotional investments readers have in the familiar figure of Geoffrey Chaucer. Poetic influence is seen as an agonistic, even Oedipal, struggle for the “strong” poet to displace the poetic father figure by misreading him, and re-appropriating the imaginative space that he occupies, as the best strategy for negotiating the inevitable influence of an admired predecessor. And as many critics point out, his successors sometimes felt infantilized by his greatness. But of course, to name this early influential figure in this gendered language sets up a powerful dominant image of what constitutes poetic authority.