• English Language & Literature Teaching
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.91-107
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• 2003

Although the language of Geoffrey Chaucer as part of late Middle English has been discussed by many studies, among which David Burnley (1983) seems to be most remarkable, some aspects of Chaucer's language still need to be better illuminated for a more thorough understanding of not only Chaucer's work and language but also the English language in the late Middle English period. This paper examines the English negation of Chaucer's language, shown especially in his Canterbury Tales, and explains how negation is used in his work, focusing on the three different types of sentence negation and the uses of or and and in the scope of negation.

• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.53 no.2
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• pp.281-306
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• 2007

M. M. Bakhtin's dialogic concept of multi-voiced discourse allows us to open up the text of The Clerk's Tale and to account for its radical heterogeneity. Once we recognize the multi-voiced character of The Clerk's Tale, then what was heretofore regarded as discontinuous or ignored can be seen as the clash of several different world-views. Such a conceptual framework gives an added depth and scope to such thematic subjects as sovereignty, the status of women, and rhetorical style. There are three different and antagonistic voices involved in the tale's narration. These voices project different viewpoints or world-views, and they consequently engage each other in a polemic debate. Their relationship with each other is discontinuous and dialectical rather than continuous and harmonious. The first voice is the Petrarchan voice of moral allegory, which is the voice of tradition, authority, and high seriousness. This voice of moral allegory regards the story of Griselda as an exemplum of spiritual constancy and virtuous suffering. The second voice is the Clerkly voice of pathos based on human experience and feeling. This voice is defined by the Clerk's asides and apostrophes interspersed in the narrative proper, which function to engage the Petrarchan voice in a polemical debate. The third voice is the voice of parody, nominally identified with Chaucer the poet, which is located in the second ending, including Envoy. Whereas the other two voices are earnest and serious, the voice of parody is irrelevant, playful and antagonistic to both the Petrarchan voice of moral allegory and the Clerkly voice of secular humility.