Chapter 16 - The English Context

Summary

This essay argues that Chaucer’s ‘English context’ cannot be divided from multiple other European and insular contexts. English as a language was the product of multiple waves of colonialism; England was a multilingual place; ‘English’ literature was heavily influenced by other literatures, especially literature written in Latin, French and Italian. It is traditional to assert that Chaucer mocked his English heritage through Sir Thopas, a pastiche of the popular ‘tail-rhyme’ genre. However, Chaucer was well aware of the variety and richness of English literary tradition. Manuscripts such as Auchinleck remind us of the many different things that English could do at this time, including estates satire, complaint and debate. Alliterative poems such as Pearl reveal contemporary poets’ ability to bring together diverse literary forms. Chaucer was exceptional not because he wrote in English but because of his unerring capacity to knit together multiple, interlinked, multilingual sources and traditions to create new things of wonder.