Authority, Identity, and "The Idea of the Vernacular" in "The Owl and the Nightingale."

Author / Editor
Phillips-Jones, Robin.

Title
Authority, Identity, and "The Idea of the Vernacular" in "The Owl and the Nightingale."

Published
Marginalia 18 (2015): 14-23.

Description
Destabilizes the notion of a progression of "identifiable movements" in English vernacular writing culminating in Chaucer in the fourteenth century, arguing that "The Owl and the Nightingale" (c. 1200) should be taught as an early foundational vernacular text. The poem employs "outrageous satire" through the vernacular to critique and reconfigure the form of Latin debate poetry.

Chaucer Subjects
Language and Word Studies