Since literature is the most significant medium of language, these language - world problems expressed by these philosophers are also highlighted in several literary works. It is especially postmodern literature that deals with the problems of language, its supremacy over the speaker, the idea that our interpretation of the world, the entirety of human experience is constructed by a symbolic system. Many writers explore the notion that we cannot control language, it cannot be used to represent reality, it is only a tool for humans to cope with the world. One major literary effect of this philosophical problem is the crisis of authorship. In postmodernism, the alleged control of the author over the text is undermined. Since the author has to submit himself to the superiority of language he cannot have authority over the text. Peter Ackroyd’s Chatterton is one of those postmodern novels that put much emphasis on the autonomy of language. Throughout this novel the power of language is emphasized in order to undermine the control of the author over the text. My thesis aims at exploring the most significant elements in Ackroyd’s novel that refer to the crisis of language and those which represent the consequences of the autonomy of language in literature, the alienation of the author from the text.