Chaucer and Courtly Speech
- Author / Editor
- Benson, Larry D.
Chaucer and Courtly Speech
- Published
- Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Genres, Themes, and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988), pp. 11-30.
- Description
- Argues that Chaucer was the "Father of English Prudery" because (fabliaux notwithstanding) he elevated and purified the English language by inventing a language of circumlocution and courtly indirection and by substituting Latinate terms for the Anglo-Saxon "shitwordes" in common use before refinements were developed.
- Bawdry being "consequent to and dependent upon prudery," Chaucer is also the "Father of English Bawdry."
- Alternative Title
- Genres, Themes, and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century
- Chaucer Subjects
- Language and Word Studies.