Since the eighteenth century, writers have sought to stabilize and regulate the English language variation and change were seen as disruptive and hostile to serious literary endeavor. The result was a linguistic melting pot where Modern English is characterized by standardization and regularity, Chaucer’s Middle English was dynamic and unregulated. During the early part of the fourteenth century, immigration was greatest from East Anglia in the second half of that century, it was focused more on the Central and North Midlands. Although it is historically an East Midland dialect, London English of this period was influenced by a variety of non-metropolitan dialects, as speakers from different parts of the country migrated to London in search of work. In Chaucer’s day, London English carried no greater status than any other dialect.Īs in many modern cities, the language spoken on the streets of Chaucer’s London was characterized by considerable diversity-the result of large-scale immigration into the capital during the fourteenth century. The prominence of the city of London meant that it formed the basis of the standard language, but this was a later, fifteenth-century, development. Since he was a Londoner by birth, Chaucer’s works are written in the dialect of that city. It is because of this dialectal variation that reading Chaucer’s Middle English is quite a different experience from reading the works of his contemporaries, such as Piers Plowman and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which were both written in dialects of the West Midlands. The word not, for instance, might appear as nat, noght, nawt, naught, na ȝt and many other similar forms. So, where Modern English has just one way of spelling most words (setting aside the small number of variants between US and British English, such as color and colour), there were numerous ways of spelling common words in Middle English. While dialect variation has been a feature of spoken English throughout its history, the Middle English period was characterised by considerable variety in writing too. An important feature of the division between the Middle and the Early Modern periods was the emergence of a standard written variety of English. As the term “Middle” English implies, the period in which Chaucer wrote was one of considerable flux and change, in which the Old English spoken by the Anglo-Saxons (a language that resembles Modern German more closely than it does Modern English) was transformed into Early Modern English-a term that emphasizes its position as the foundation of the language spoken throughout the world today.Ĭhaucer wrote during the final decades of the fourteenth century hence, his language belongs to the later Middle English period. But, where Chaucer’s language may at first appear disordered, much of its apparent irregularity can be explained by reference to the language’s historical development. This is especially true for modern readers accustomed to the world of Standard English and the fixity of the printed book. To a modern reader turning to Chaucer’s work for the first time, the immediate impression is of considerable linguistic chaos and confusion. The history of the English language is traditionally divided into the following periods: Old English (650-1100), Middle English (1100-1500), Early Modern English (1500-1800), Late Modern English (1800-present day) (for a general overview see Horobin 2016). Chaucer’s Middle English Simon Horobin A reference chapter from The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales (September 2017)
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