CHAUCER′S
VOCABULARY

Universität Gesamthochschule Siegen

Proseminar Anglistik: Middle English- Chaucer′s Language, Literature and Times

SS 1997

Dozentin: Kristina Dönch

Hausarbeit zum Thema:

Chaucer′s Vocabulary

Sylvia Brand
Studiengang: Wirtschaft/ Anglistik/
Sozialwissenschaften auf Lehramt
Semester: 2

Contents

Introduction: Chaucer′s Middle English

Chaucer′s Life

The French Influence on Chauecr

The Italien Influence on Chaucer

The Latin Influence on Chaucer

Influences of English Venaculars on Chaucer

Chaucer′s Reputation and Influence

Bibliography

Chaucer′s Middle English

CHAUCER′S LIFE

It is very difficult to trace a precise biography of Chaucer because we have no uninterrupted information about his life. We can only conjecture the manner in which Chaucer spent his life from hints given us in his own works, and from various notices in official records. The following biography gives dates, which claim not to be a hundred percent correct, but are supposed to border an approximate period for a special event.

1340
Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London, about 1340. His father was John Chaucer, citizen and vintner of London. His mother′s name was Agnes. His grandfather was Robert Chaucer, of Jpswich and London, who married a widow named Maria Heyronn. John Chaucer′s house stood in Upper Thames Street, beside Walbrook, just where that street is now crossed by the South-Eastern Railway from Cannonstreet Station. It is thought that Chaucer was sent for his early schooling to St Paul`s Almonry.

1357
John Chaucer, the poet′s father, was in attendance on Edward III since 1338. This connection to the court led to his son′s employment there, some years afterwards, as a page in the household of Elisabeth, wife of Lionel, duke of Clarence, the third son of Edward III.

1359
In 1359, Chaucer joined the army of Edward III when the king invaded France, and was there taken prisoner. In May, 1360, the peace of Bretigny was concluded between the French and English kings. Chaucer had been set at liberty in March, when Edward paid for his ransom. It is not known when exactly Chaucer began to write poetry, but it is reasonable to believe that it was on his return from France. He set to work to translate the French poem The Roman de la Rose.

1361
From 1361-66 Chaucer possibly accompanied Prince Lionel to Ireland.

1368
During 1368 and part of 1369 Chaucer was in London. In October, 1368, his patron, Prince Lional, died, and it appears that Chaucer′s services were consequently trannferred to the next brother, John of Gaunt, duke of Lancaster.

1369
In the autumn of 1369 Blanche, the first wife of John of Gaunt, died at the early age of twenty-nine. Chaucer did honour to her memory in one of his earliest poems, entitled The Deth of Blaunche the Duchesse.

1372
Before 1372 Chaucer finished at least parts of a translation of The Roman de la Rose, The Book of the Duchess and The ABC of the Virgin.
From 1370 to 1386, Chaucer was attached to the court, and employed in frequent diplomatic services. During this time The House of Fame and The Parliament of Fowls were written. In December, 1372, being employed in the king′s service, he left England for Genoa, Pina, and Florence, and remained in Italy for nearly eleven months.

1374
On June 8, 1374, Chaucer was appointed to the office of Comptroller of the Customs and Subsidy of Wools, Skins, and Leather, for the port of London.
In 1374 for the first time a Philippa Chaucer is mentioned as Geoffrey′s wife, though a Philippa Chaucer is mentioned as one of the Ladies of the Chamber to Queen Philippa earlier. If this information is correct, it becomes highly probable that Chaucer′s wife Philippa was Philippa Roet, sister of the Katharine de Roet of Hainault, who married Sir John Swynford, and afterwards became the mistress, and in 1396 the third wife of John of Gaunt.

1376
Towards the end of this year, Sir John Burlay and Geoffrey Chaucar were employed upon some secret service.

1377
In February, 1377, Chaucar was employed on a secret mission to Flandern. In April he was sent to Franee, to treat for peace with king Charles V.

1378
In January, Chaucer seems to have been employed in France. Soon afterwards, he was again sent to Italy, from May 28 to September 19, being employed on a mission to Lombardy, to treat with Barnabo Vinconti, duke of Milan; to whose death the poet alludes in his Monkes Tale.

1380
By deed of May 1, 1380, one Cecilia Chaumpayne released Chaucer from a charge which she had brought against him "de raptu meo". We have no further information about the circumstances of this case. Between 1380 and 1385 Boece, Troilus and Criseyde and a translation of The Boethian Ballades were completed.

1382
Whilst still retaining the office of Comptroller of the Customs, he was now also appointed Comptroller of the Petty Customs (May 8,1382). Chaucer begins The Palamon later known as The Knight`s Tale.

1385
In February, 1385, he was allowed the great privilege of nominating a permanent deputy to perform his duties as Comptroller. It is highly probable that he owed this favour to the queen Anne for, in the Prologue of The Legend of Good Women he expresses himself most gratefully towards her. If we may trust the description of his house and garden in the Prologue of The Legend of Good Women, it seems that he was living in the country, and had already given up his house over the city gate at Aldgate. We learn incidentally, from a note from the Envoy to Scogan, that he was living at Greenwich. And it is highly probable that Chaucer′s residence at Greenwich extended from 1385 to the end of 1399, when he took a new house at Westminster.

1386
In this year Chaucer was elected a knight of the shire for Kent, in the Parliament held at Westminster. In August, his patron John of Gaunt went to Spain; and during his absence, his brother Thomas, duke of Gloucester, who was ill disposed towards his brother John, dismissed Chaucer from both his offices, of Comptroller of Wool and Comptroller of Petty Customs. In 1386 Chaucer also produced a large instalment of The Legend of the Saints of Cupid, which is also known as The Legend of Good Women.

1387
In this year Chaucer′s wife, Philippa died. To this loss he alludes in his Envoy to Bukton. It must have been about this time that he was composing portions of his greatest poem: The Canterbury Tales.

1389
On May 3, Richard II. suddenly took the government into his own hands. John of Gaunt returned to England soon afterwards, and effected an outward reconciliation between the king and the duke of Gloucester. The Lancastrian party was now in power once more, and Chaucer was appointed Clerk of the King′s Works at Westminster in July

1390
In 1390, Chaucer was also appointed Clerk of the Works at St George′s Chapel at Windsor, and was put on a Commission to repair the banks of the Thames between Woolwich and Greenwich.

1391
This is the date given by Chaucer to his prose Treatise on the Astrolabe, which he compiled for the use of his little son Lewis, of whom nothing more is known, and it is supposed that he died at an early age. At this time, for some unknown reason, the poet lost his appointment as Clerk of the Works but is appointed Deputy Forester of North Pertherton in Somerset.

1398
In this year, Chaucer was made sole Forester of North Pertherton Park.

1400
The traditional date of Chaucer′s death is October 25, 1400. His death doubtless took place in his newly aquired house at Westminster; and he attained the age of about sixty years. He was buried in Westminster Abbey.^*

The French Influence on Chaucer

Chaucer was born nearly twohundred years after the Norman landing at Hastings in 1066. During this time the English life was strongly connected with the French language.
Although the co-existence of French and English as the twin venacular languages of England after the Conquest was a quite unequal one. Since the ideals of social behaviour were drawn from France, so the French language was associated with social elevation, and the French words and phrases were thought to give elegance to English expressions.

From early youth Londoner Chaucer lived amid a royal French company of dukes like Lionel of Antwerp and John of Gaunt and their duchesses Elizabeth of Ulster and Blanche of Lancaster. Later, being employed at the court, he listend to French speaking people all day, as a customs official he transacted much business in French himself, and he read and discussed French literature with French speaking scholars. This is why Chaucer′s realationship to the French language was quite different from his relationship to other languages he knew. To him Latin was a great language of learning and Italian a foreign vernacular of large cultural importance. But French was a second native tongue.

It would have been quite natural for Chaucer to have begun his writing career with original verse in French like his employee the Duke of Lancaster. But Chaucer started as a translator and produced English versions of French poems. It was a famous thirteenth-century French work, initiated by Guillaume de Lorris and later continued by Jean de Meun, which Chaucer first began to anglicize as The Romaunt of the Rose.

Translation remained part of Chaucer′s programme eventhough he became more independant from his sources in his later works. Re-telling, with or without embellishment, was the norm, and the modern idea that "copying" is disreputable was simply not current in the literature of the Middle Ages.¹ "Chaucer had French sources for nearly everything he wrote. Even when he was using Latin or Italian originals he usually found versions in French to assist his composition."²
Translation also was the main reason for Chaucer to introduce French words into his English texts. French words often appear in the poet′s translations when he endeavours to translate a word for which no English equivalent existed at the time. We find this manifested in the fact that Chaucer used more French words in his translations than in his original works.³

Another reason for the importation of French words is their use for riming purposes. But whereas J. Mersand says that "Fifty-three per cent of these words are used for riming purposes"⁴, D. Burnley insists that "The number of new Romance words used for rimes is only about one-quarter of the total"⁵ .

It is obvious that any person prefers certain words to others. It would be interesting for us to know why Chaucer should have been attracted to the words he imported. Linguistic research found that Chaucer borrowed new nouns (like peach, mordant, moisture, portraiture, satin and tissue) most often. In the Romaunt, about 65 percent of the words borrowed directly are nouns.⁶ Chaucer also borrowed new adjectives such as apparaunte, delitous, and resemblable. They interested Chaucer probably by their sound, and not their meaning. All in all we find an affection for liquid sounds.⁷

Nevertheless we must distinguish at the least between established French borrowings, which have become incorporated into the common core of the language, and those which are new and are still felt foreign to the common English reader of this period. French original words can be discovered for only about 10 percent of Chaucer′s new French words.⁸

Being accused by a group of scholars like Verstegan or Skinner of importing too many French words and corrupting the English language, at the present time probably the largest class of scholars, has asserted that Chaucer used French words that had already become part of the English language. We can be fairly confident that early Anglo-Norman borrowings like castel, prisoun, daunce would have attracted no attention in an English context, neither would a phrase like to have mercy.⁹ Inquiries have found that Chaucer used a percentage of Roman vocabulary normal for his time.¹⁰ So in many cases Chaucer ought not to be charged as the importer of words and phrases, which he only used after the example of his predecessors and in common with his contemporaries.

In fact comparative statistics are usually not available because the size of an author′s vocabulary depends on the definition of a "word" adopted by the statisticians. For example, do the three Chaucerian forms syngen, syngynge, and song represent three sperate items of his vocabulary, or are they merely the different grammatical representatives of a single item? And are proper nouns and variant spellings also be included? Acknowleding such uncertainties, it has been estimated that Chaucer used in his English vocabulary about 8400 words.¹¹ Expressing the matter by percentage we find that Chaucer′s English words contain nearly 52 percent derived from Romance sources and about 49 percent from Germanic sources.¹² The addition of French and Latin words directly borrowed increases the Romance percentage to 54 percent.13

Chaucer introduced about 1,180 Romance words into the English vocabulary.14 He used more of them in his early translations than in his more independant later works. He increased the store of Romance fter his acquaintance with Italian literature, and used most of them at the height of his popularity at the Court. The Boethius and The Troilus contain the largest number of new French words.¹⁵

After Chaucer′s reversal of fortune in 1386, he abandoned many of his Romance words probably the Gallic tastes of Court circles. The following words he never used again: apparaunte, flourettes, floutours, scochouns.¹⁹ "Almost 6o per cent of the new Romance words are dropped by Chaucer after their first use".²⁰

It has been estimated that Chaucer′s vocabulary is approximately twice that of Gower, equal to that of the Authorised Version of the Bible, but only one third of that wielded by Shakespeare.²¹ In comparison to Gower and Maundeville Chaucer introduced (as far as our present knowledge of chronology of Middle English literature can show us) more words from Romance sources than these two together.²² Chaucer′s Romance vocabulary is about twice as large as Gower′s and three times as large as Maundeville′s.²³ The Romance words that are found for the first time in Chaucer′s writings are more familiar to us now than the new words of Gower and Maundeville.

The Italien Influence on Chaucer

...

The Latin Influence on Chaucer

During the Middle Ages Latin was the vehicle of all learning. Many scientific books were only available in Latin, and Latin was the language of scholars and the clergy. Its classical form had to be mastered by every educated person.

Although we know nearly nothing about Chaucer′s education, a plausible suggestion has been made by Edith Rickert who assumed that Chaucer attended St. Paul′s School, where he would have had the chance to read Latin books.

Nevertheless the amount of classical literature that Chaucer certainly knew is small.¹ There is evidence that Chaucer had read the three most outstanding Latin epics of the twelfth century: the Cosmographia of Bernard Silverstris, the De Planctu Naturae and -Anticlaudianus of Allan of Lille.² These three are cosmic epics, which may be one reason why he borrowed most often technical terms from Latin works. Beside "there is little doubt that the ability to use complicated words of Latin origin was considered by Chaucer and his contemporaries, (...) to add dignity and ceremony to literary compositions."³

In this context it is important to realise that Latin classics did not come to Chaucer as they come to us today. We read them in printed texts based on the comparison of a number of manuscripts, and often furnished with explanatory notes drawing on a strong tradition of accurate scholarship. A medieval reader usually had to rely on a single manuscript, which might be full of corrupt readings and have sections of the text missing. Learning the language was made more difficult by the absence of systematic dictionaries.

Chaucer used in his English vocabulary about 8 000 words among them Latin quotations numbering approximately 317 separate words.⁴ A striking feature about the list of Chaucer′s classical borowings is that they mostly occur early in his career, in The Book of the Duchess and The House of Fame, the stories in The Legend of the Good Women, in them he often translates laboriously from the Latin⁵ .

Furthermore we know that Chaucer often used French and Italien translations of Latin works. "One reason for this may be simply that he did not read classical Latin fluently"⁶ . In passages apparently translated from Latin works we can find a lot of translation faults. Either Chaucer made them himself or he took them over from a false translation. Compared to a translation of Boethius from Jean de Meun, we can find translation faults similar to the ones in Chaucer′s work.⁷

Investigations by Huppé, Robertson and by Meech have found that several works of Chaucer have been influenced by Ovid. Presumably he used the frenchified version.

Chaucer did not make the sharp distinction between "classical" and "medieval" to which we are accustomed⁸ . Texts from the first, fourth, fifth, twelfth and thirteenth centuries appear in the same collection. For example when the Wife of Bath tells us about her fifth husband, Chaucer used quotations from the Bible, Greek prose, classical Latin poetry (Ovid), Church Fathers and eleventh-century medieval writings (Trotula) in the same passage.⁹

The Influences of English vernaculars on Chaucer

.....

Chaucer′s Reputation and Influence

Chaucer′s own generation already perceived him as a father and mentor. For his imediate contemporareis he was the great poet of English love poetry.¹

The following generation quickly began to establish him as the first in a new tradition of English poetry. The impulse to see Chaucer as the "Father of English literature tradition" has remained a common perception in our time. "By making the concious choice to write in English, he symbolizes the rebirth of English as a national language."²

Up till today Chaucer′s flexible and wide ranging use of language is prised.³ He′s termed the importer of many "new English" words derived from Latin, Italien but most of all from French. Although linguistic research found that Chaucer used predominantly words which had already become part of the English language, it his merit that more than 1000 new words were introduced to the English vocabulary.⁴

Chaucer enriched the English language, by importing new words, which made it possible to express much more different shades of meaning.

Spoken English differed from county to county. The five main speech areas were the Northern, West and East Midlands, the South and Kent. The triangle of Oxford, Cambridge, and London shared the same kind of English, which may be said to have become the basis for standard English in the twentieth century.⁵ This is not at least due to Londoner Chaucer ,who, as the first important English author after a long time of French reign decided to write in the London dialect.

The first attempt at a collected edition of the Works of Chaucer and others was Pynson′s in 1526, but the first editor to search out and compare different manuscripts was William Thynne in 1532.

The seventeenth century, by contrast with the sixteenth, showed Chuacer′s reputation reaching perhaps its lowest point⁶. There were no editions of his works printed between 1602 and 1687.

Dryen′s edition in 1700 of fables, Ancient and Modern, which included translations from the works of Homer, Ovid, Boccaccio and Chaucer, was a landmark in the rise of chaucer′s reputation.⁷ It also set the parameters for eighteenth-century reading of Chaucer by replacing the glossary of hard words with a completely modernised text⁸ .

In 1868 the Chaucer Society was founded "to honour to Chaucer" by Frederick J. Furnivall. It was Furnivall′s work on the Chaucer manuscripts that enabled W.W. Skeat to produce the first complete critical edition of the works in 1894-7. This edition was followed by a flood of works on Chaucer in the twentieth century.

Today Chaucer together with Shakespeare is seen as one of the most important authors of English literature⁹ .