The Pronoun of Address in Chaucer’s “Troilus.”

Author / Editor
Johnston, Everett C.

Title
The Pronoun of Address in Chaucer’s “Troilus.”

Published
Language Quarterly 1 (1962): 17-20.

Description
Discusses the uses of “familiar ‘thou’ and polite ‘ye’” by the major characters in TC, demonstrating that, in general, Chaucer “observed the mode of his day in the use of the pronoun of address,” and offering hypotheses about instances where the characters use “irregularities,” especially Pandarus’s in his “stratagems.” Comments on pronouns of address in Chaucer’s sources, and suggests that Pandarus’s usage indicates he is a member of the “Lower Nobility.”

Chaucer Subjects
Troilus and Criseyde
Language and Word Studies
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations