What is the language of Geoffrey Chaucer?

English
Middle English
Geoffrey Chaucer/Languages

One of the reasons Chaucer is so important is that he made the decision to write in English and not French. In the centuries following the Norman invasion, French was the language spoken by those in power. The Canterbury Tales was one of the first major works in literature written in English.

What is the writing style of Geoffrey Chaucer?

Moreover, like much of Shakespeare’s work, Chaucer’s frame narrative is written in iambic pentameter, an unpretentious, conversational meter with alternate stresses.

What are three features of Chaucer’s language and writing style?

Firstly, Chaucer’s style is marked by lucidity of expression, joyous originality and easiness free of ambiguities and direct philosophical maxims. In describing nearly all his characters, he uses colloquial language easy to understand for a common man.

What dialect does Chaucer use in Canterbury tales?

Language in The Canterbury Tales The Canterbury Tales is written in Middle English, which bears a close visual resemblance to the English written and spoken today. In contrast, Old English (the language of Beowulf, for example) can be read only in modern translation or by students of Old English.

Is Chaucer Old English or Middle English?

The best known writer of Middle English, Geoffrey Chaucer, wrote in the second half of the 14th century in the emerging London dialect, although he also portrays some of his characters as speaking in northern dialects, as in the “Reeve’s Tale”.

Which English dialect did Geoffrey Chaucer adopt?

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 …

How did Geoffrey Chaucer influence the English language?

In addition to his extensive body of literature, his poetry made three important contributions to English literature: he wrote in the English Vernacular and he is credited with introducing iambic pentameter and the Rhyme Royal to English poetry. He is best known for The Canterbury Tales.

What is the contribution of Geoffrey Chaucer to English literature?

Chaucer is known for his metrical innovations. He invented Rhyme Royal stanza pattern which is a seven lined stanza in iambic pentameter with a rhyme scheme of ababbcc. He was also one of the first to use blank verse for his poetry with only a few anonymous short works using it before him.