The Title "Sir."

Author / Editor
Burrow, J. A.

Title
The Title "Sir."

Published
Essays on Medieval Literature (Oxford: Clarendon, 1984), pp. 69-78.

Description
Documents that the honorific "sir" plus a "knight’s name" occurs twelve times in Th and "not once elsewhere" in Chaucer's works, suggesting that, confined to a "burlesque context" and similar to historical French practice, this usage should be "understood as a coterie joke.”

Alternative Title
Essays on Medieval Literature

Chaucer Subjects
Tale of Sir Thopas
Language and Word Studies