Meditations on the 'Historical Present' and 'Collective Memory' in Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Author / Editor
- Carruthers, Mary [J.]
Meditations on the 'Historical Present' and 'Collective Memory' in Chaucer and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
- Published
- Chris Humphrey and W. M. Ormrod, eds. Time in the Medieval World (Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 137-55.
- Description
- Like tense-switching and first-person point of view, the use of the "historical present" by Chaucer and the Gawain poet illustrates how medieval authors could convincingly remember and authenticate the stories they told. The past is the time of narrative; the present is the tense of narrative. Only modern literary convention prefers past events narrated in the past tense.
- Alternative Title
- Time in the Medieval World.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Background and General Criticism.
- Language and Word Studies.
- Style and Versification.