What does the term author mean in the Romance literatures of the Middle Ages? What is its role in structuring the collection of texts attributed to it? Do the medieval written testimonies reflect the idea the author had of his work or do they obey other cultural criteria established by the compilers? This book brings together the contributions to the international colloquium with the same title organised by the Universities of Fribourg and Geneva and takes us to the heart of the fundamental dialectic between the literary author whose figure emerges in the course of the Middle Ages and the dynamics of the dissemination of his work.