Rhetorical Word-Play in Chaucer.

Description: Surveys critics' attention to Chaucer's word-play, and shows through multiple examples that such play is more common in his works than previously observed, especially his early works. Clarifies kinds of word-play in medieval rhetoric and literature--discussing "adnominatio," "traductio," "rime riche," and double entendre ("significatio"), and focuses on Chaucer's emulations of such "rhetorical trickery" as it described in rhetorical handbooks and exemplified in French poetry.

Chaucer Subjects: Style and Versification
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations