The Trilingual England of Geoffrey Chaucer

The Trilingual England of Geoffrey Chaucer W. Rothwell Manchester University Although it is well known chat English society in the Middle Ages functioned through the medium of a trilingual culture, the role of each component of that culture is less well understood.1 Nor is it usually recognized to what extent the three languages were in practice intertwined. Two ofthe constituent elements, English and French, were living vernacu­ lars; the third, Latin, was a dead construct. Two, Latin and French, had been in widespread use as languages of record for centuries. The third, English, was used increasingly for record purposes from the later four­ teenth century onward and eventually absorbed the roles of the other two, thus becoming the sole national language. Chaucer provides an ideal focus for an examination of this whole topic, being involved with all three languages in his various capacities as an envoy of the Crown abroad, a senior home civil servant employed at one time or another in a number of different departments of government, and also a great writer. Moreover, he was living in the second half of the four­ teenth century, when the linguistic situation in England was in the process ofa change so decisive that it would mark offthe medieval world from our own. In this article I attempt to illustrate through the figure of Chaucer the interaction of the three languages as used by the literate classes in the society ofhis time. His writings provide ample material for an examination 1 The dictionaries referred to in this article, together with their abbreviations, are as follows: F. Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l'ancienne languefranfaise (Paris: Viewig, 1880-1902) (DALF); A. Tobler and E. Lommatzsch, Altfranzosisches Worterbuch (Berlin: Weidmannsche Buchhandlung, 1925-) (AW); W. von Wartburg, Franzo'sisches etymologisches Worterbuch (Bonn: Klopp, 1928-) (FEW); W. Rothwell et al., eds., Anglo-Norman Dictionary (London: Modern Humanities Research Association, 1977-92) (AND); R. E. Latham et al., eds., Dictionary ofMedieval Latinfrom British Sources (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975-) (DMLBS); R. E. Latham, ed., RevisedMedieval Latin Word-List (London: Oxford University Press, 1965) (RMLW). 45 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER of the literary English of his day, including its as yet largely unacknowl­ edged debt to Anglo-French as distinct from the French of Paris; the char­ acteristics of the Latin and French used in late-fourteenth-century records in England can be studied in detail in the copious Chaucer Life-Records,2 which brings together all manner of documents concerning his activities and those of his contemporaries with whom he came into contact. Material is also introduced from other records of the later fourteenth century uncon­ nected with Chaucer to confirm the validiry of the findings made on the basis of the Chaucer material. For centuries before Chaucer's time Latin had been used professionally by many men of widely varying abilities for different purposes. At the apex of the pyramid of Latiniry was a small number of erudite scholars of Euro­ pean stature compiling original works of literature in Latin, together with a number of high officials possessed of a good command of the language, while at a much lower level an increasingly large body of clerks of lesser competence and training used Latin to carry out the routine administration necessary to any developing governmental or municipal organization. The more complex a sociery becomes, the greater is the need for administrative machinery to enable it to function adequately, and the greater becomes the need for literate clerks to operate that machinery. Between the Conquest and the late fourteenth century the growth of the royal administration, centered on London, and the corresponding development of municipal au­ thorities in both London and·numerous other towns and cities entailed the creation of a class of scribes able to keep the necessary records relating to legal, civic, financial, and commercial matters.3 It is the Latin of these clerks, the primary language of record in medieval England, not that of the scholars, which characterizes the official docu­ ments preserved from the fourteenth century. Typical of those at the lower end of the literate classes is Chaucer's Summoner of The Canterbury Tales, who had picked up a few Latin...