To study changing notions of authorship, and of the relation between author and audience in the Renaissance, the author focuses on the interface between text proper and audience, the preface. He shows that in the preface complex questions about an individual’s relations to the public sphere were (indeed, still are) worked out. Instead of disparaging the individuality of the author, however, he argues that the shift between systems of authorisation in the Renaissance enabled the preface - indeed, authorship itself - to emerge as a mode of self-authorisation.