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Christopher Cannon, The Making of Chaucer's English: A Study of Words, Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature 39 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998). xiii + 435 pp. ISBN 0-5274-7. L45.00/ $69.95.
This is a rigorous analysis of assumptions about the newness of Chaucer's language. That such assumptions - by scholars and readers from the early modern period to the present - have been subjective is a claim that is substantiated here in two ways: first, by reconsidering the lexicographic evidence; and second, by looking closely at the subjectivism that lies at the heart of lexicography itself. As Christopher Cannon explains, philology is theory, as in the OED's understanding (which Cannon's analysis brings to the surface) that `fixing quantities and circumscribing limits can only be a point of departure for the mind that endeavours to grasp ambiguity and uncertainty' (p. 4). This book embarks on its own theoretical paths as well via meditations on 'newness', origins, and the making of myths about Chaucer's originality. On Cannon's argument, Chaucer's English is not new but generally traditional. That `Chaucer made English capable of poetry' (Ian Robinson's phrase) is the donnie everywhere challenged in this study.
Cannon divides his book into two parts: `The study of words' (chs 1-5), which makes a discursive argument for Chaucer's lexical traditionalism and analyses how Chaucer's verbal settings give his traditionalism the appearance of innovation; and `Words studied', an index (almost zoo pages) of all Chaucer's vocabulary that can be historicized, summarizing the evidence set out in part I...