English in the Middle Ages
- Author / Editor
- Machan, Tim William.
English in the Middle Ages
- Published
- Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
- Physical Description
- x, 205 pp.
- Description
- Machan studies the "social meanings, functions, and status of the English language in the late-medieval period," i.e., its "sociolinguistic contextualization." He explores Henry III's letters of 1258; the relationships between language, dialects, and nationhood; RvT and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; and the early afterlife of Middle English. Chaucer uses aberrant dialectical forms in RvT not to record a northern dialect, but to represent the dynamics of social ambition through linguistic form--a technique he also uses in PF and in the reference to the Revolt of 1381 in NPT.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Reeve and His Tale.
- Language and Word Studies.
- Parliament of Fowls.
- Nun's Priest and His Tale.