'Sely John' in the Legende' of of the 'Miller's Tale'
- Author / Editor
- Cooper, Geoffrey.
'Sely John' in the Legende' of of the 'Miller's Tale'
- Published
- Journal of English and Germanic Philology 79 (1980): 1-12.
- Description
- "Sely" (from OE "gesaelig") originally meant "happy, fortunate," and hence "blessed by God, pious, holy." Later,however, the word took on connotations of "pitiful" and "silly, rustic," while still retaining its earlier meaning in different contexts. Chaucer uses "sely" in all these various senses in his poems, and its ambiguous use in MilT as an epithet for John the carpenter is rich in irony and multivalence of meaning (recalling the similar device of the tag "hende" Nicholas).
- Chaucer Subjects
- Miller and His Tale.
- Language and Word Studies.