In addition to this thematic aspect of the signature, however, and its place right at the dream frame, after the narrator has fallen asleep but before we discover that he is young again, the sentence also evokes the way that the poem is constructed. Mon chier fil can be the person Venus is here addressing, the narrator , and his art is therefore poetry. Since she is Venus, however, her chier fil can also be Cupid, the dieu d'amours , whom the e page 127 dreamer , as a young man in love, serves. His art, then, is love. Finally, by means of the signature, the extra-textual person Froissart is denoted, the author .
Author also evokes the extra-textual realm, narrator the text proper, and dreamer the inner frame.
All this is deftly done, and it not only concerns the thematic content of the poem but draws attention also to the means and fact of its making. These two levels of the poem are in harmony with the simultaneous possibilities of autobiography and fiction created by the simultaneous linking and separation of author and narrator.