By assessing these paratextual elements, the dissertation demonstrates how readers engaged with Chaucer long after his death and how editors helped develop an image of the poet. This approach shifts the focus of textual interpretation out of the author's domain and into a more democratic arena. Through a close study of the printing history of the Canterbury Tales, this dissertation demonstrates that the creation of this "arena" lay within the hands of the printers, publishers, and editors who presented Chaucer to readers. Presentation of the Canterbury Tales during the handpress period was squarely in the hands of men and women who massaged and manipulated the text to match their own vision of the text and its author. This abundance of editorial mediation has had a significant, but historically overlooked, impact on Chaucer and his work.

From the advent of printing in England, Chaucer's work was under the control of those who edited, translated, and dispensed his texts. Print culture allowed for dialogue between Chaucer's editors and his readers—one that helped establish Geoffrey Chaucer as "the Father of English Poetry" and a representative of English nationalism and identity. This dissertation explores how the paratextual elements of handpress-period publications defined this representation of Geoffrey Chaucer.