Honors Theses
Title
The individual voice: The expression of authority through dialects, idiolects, and borrowed terminology in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Date of Award
Spring 2012
Project Type
Senior Honors Thesis
College or School
COLA
Department
English
Program or Major
English Literature
First Advisor
Cord Whitaker
Abstract
Using Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, this paper seeks to demonstrate how language affects the social construction of identity in literature within the late Middle Ages. To accomplish this it looks at how characters (particularly those in the Reeve's and Miller's Tales) attempt to give themselves greater authority over their peers in instances of social conflict by either changing their dialect or, by using terminology borrowed from power-imbued languages like French and Latin. The paper also discusses changes in authority outside the literature by examining the impact of scribal idiolect on the presentation and perception of Chaucer's individual characters.
Recommended Citation
Cordell, Jacqueline, "The individual voice: The expression of authority through dialects, idiolects, and borrowed terminology in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales" (2012). Honors Theses. Paper 5.
scholars.unh.edu/honors/5
Included in
English Language and Literature Commons