This chapter takes on the metaphor of the ‘monument’and turns from anonymous romance texts to thosecomposed by named authors, in particular by GeoffreyChaucer. As a metaphor, the monument highlightscurated longevity as resistance to erasure.Monuments are crafted in the present to ensure thelong-term memory of a particular version of thepast. Thus, when he invokes Chaucer’s Squire’s Talein Book IV of his Faerie Queene, Edmund Spenserdefines Chaucer’s work as a ‘monument’, albeit onedefaced by time. The idea of the monument, then, isbound up with the idea of the ruin. Thus, Spenserpresents Chaucer as a monumental ruin, one uponwhich he can build for future audiences.Importantly, he does not seek to erase Chaucer, buthe highlights Chaucer’s incompleteness. This chaptercompares Spenser’s treatment of the Squire’s Talewith a less well-known seventeenth-century Squire’sTale composed by poet John Lane, who, like Spenser,uses the romance genre to build upon the ‘ruin’ ofthe past. Exploring both of these authors throughthe framework of the ‘monument’ reveals their variedapproaches to the place of the ‘father of Englishpoetry’ in literary history. Both authors useChaucer’s romance as a monumental foundation uponwhich they might define themselves, Spenser as akindred spirit, a poet, and Lane as an antiquarianscholar interested in restoring what time hasdefaced.