After reading Ovid's Alcyone and Ceyx I was intrigued by Chaucer's presentation of the story. One thing that was particularly striking was some of the details which Chaucer chose to incorporate in his own tale. In his recounting of the story he states that Alcyone "died within the third morning" while in Ovid's tale she and Ceyx are transposed into birds and in a sense given eternal life. This may be part of Chaucer's work to color the poet narrator as a bit of a fool. I got this sense because after recounting the touching and tragic story of Alcyone and Ceyx the narrator was most struck by "gods that could make people sleep...".

This somewhat differing portrayal of the text in Chaucer, as well as his narrator's seemingly misplaced emphasis raised an interesting question. Foucault raised the concept of the ownership of texts. Using this framework I question how does this concept regarding ownership affect the use of texts within texts? What duty if any is there for a recounting author to be true to the original text? Is Chaucer's work diminished for 'sampling' from other works, or does this patchwork help to create a magnificent work?