Thrift
- Author / Editor
- Knapp, Peggy A.
Thrift
- Published
- Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 193-205.
- Description
- Both the world and the language with which we try to render it intelligible are in constant flux. Tracing changes in the word "thrift" from pre-Chaucerian times through Shakespeare,Knapp stresses the necessity for developing strategies of capturing meaning through language and the impossibility of capturing it entirely.
- On the one hand, literary uses of language seem to reflect social and linguistic history; on the other, they seem to subvert it. Chaucer's uses of "thrift" reflect both the feudal sense of propriety and the emerging Renaissance sense of frugality, as well as the tension between the two senses. Knapp discusses Chaucer's uses of the word in TC and CT.
- Alternative Title
- Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Language and Word Studies.