This chapter explores the several roles of the scribe through the lens of the genius figure: the genius of antiquity and especially the character of Genius in Alan of Lille’s The Plaint of Nature. Like Alan’s Genius, scribes are responsible for giving abstract forms material and individualized substance. Like that Genius, Chaucer’s scribes also serve custodial and tutelary functions, assuring the continuity of his work with respect both to its written form in books and to its legibility to readers. Also like Alan’s Genius, these scribes function at times as a mirror or other self of the author whose work they produce. And finally, like the genii loci from which Alan’s Genius descends, the scribes of Chaucer’s work are associated with specific places: namely, the books of his oeuvre they worked to bring forth. In this way, these scribes function as the spirit of the locale each book encloses.
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