Overview

This study argues that changes in English society and the English language are woven together, often in surprising ways, and investigates this claim by following 11 words from Chaucer's time to Shakespeare's. Middle English words like ""corage, estat, thrift"", and ""virt"" come to serve the logic of new social discourses by 1611. Language from Chaucer, Wyclif, More, Spenser, Shakespeare, Jonson and others is examined both as current and emerging usage, and as verbal play that accomplishes cultural work.

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9780333753798

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Reviews

...provide useful and vivid introductions to the lived textures of the early modern world. Renaissance Quarterly

Author Information

PEGGY A. KNAPP is a Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University. She is the co-founder and editor of the annual book series Assays: Critical Approaches to Medieval and Renaissance Texts (1981-89) and the author of The Style of John Wyclif's English Sermons (1977) and Chaucer and the Social Contest (1990). Her essays on medieval, early modern, and contemporary writers have appeared in PMLA, ELH, MLN, Criticism, Chaucer Review, and many other publications.

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