Intertextuality and authorship in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, Shakespeare and the Sonneteers.

Medieval authors were not impressed by originality the way we are nowadays. Since the value of a poem was proved by its author's skills, they focused on the art of writing. Or rewriting, which meant studying and performing profound changes in a previous text in order to emphasise 'social' factors, the personal intentions of the author (entertaining, edifying, advising) and their own sense of literary aesthetics.
Sometimes intertextuality becomes original itself. It is astonishing how medieval authors contributed greatly to the evolution of language and literature with their re-reading of c…