Preliminary Note

Abstract

By comparison with other medieval English authors, Chaucer is notable for the variety in dialect and in levels of speech which his language contains. Some of this variety, such as his use of the Northern dialect in the Reeve’s Tale, is in pursuit of particular literary effects; but much of it, although potentially useful for versification, is to be found in his works simply as the result of its prior existence in the contemporary language of London. Fourteenth-century London English, which was Chaucer’s native language, had been made various, as we shall see in the opening chapter of Part Two, by the immigration of dialect speakers from the countryside; but variety also arose in its vocabulary from the influence of French and Latin. In the case of Chaucer himself, the Italian language can also be added to these more general sources of foreiern influence.