Geoffrey Chauser .  The last poet of the Middle ages and the first poet of the Renaissance

Geoffrey Chaucer (/ˈtʃɔːsər/; c. 1343 – 25 October 1400), known as the Father of English literature,[1] is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages. He was the first poet to be buried in Poets' Corner of Westminster Abbey.

While he achieved fame during his lifetime as an author, philosopher, and astronomer, composing a scientific treatise on the astrolabefor his ten-year-old son Lewis, Chaucer also maintained an active career in the civil service as a bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Among his many works are The Book of the Duchess, The House of Fame, The Legend of Good Women and Troilus and Criseyde. He is best known today for The Canterbury Tales.

Chaucer's work was crucial in legitimizing the literary use of the Middle English vernacular at a time when the dominant literary languages in England were French and Latin.

Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London sometime around 1343, though the precise date and location of his birth remain unknown. His father and grandfather were both London vintners; several previous generations had been merchants in Ipswich. (His family name derives from the French chausseur, meaning "shoemaker".)[2] In 1324, John Chaucer, Geoffrey's father, was kidnapped by an aunt in the hope of marrying the twelve-year-old boy to her daughter in an attempt to keep property in Ipswich. The aunt was imprisoned and the £250 fine levied suggests that the family was financially secure, maybe even elite.[3] John Chaucer married Agnes Copton, who, in 1349, inherited properties including 24 shops in London from her uncle, Hamo de Copton, who is described in a will dated 3 April 1354 and listed in the City Hustings Roll as "moneyer"; he was said to be moneyer at the Tower of London. In the City Hustings Roll 110, 5, Ric II, dated June 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer refers to himself as me Galfridum Chaucer, filium Johannis Chaucer, Vinetarii, Londonie'.

Enlightenment. The main representatives of the period

The Enlightenment (also known as the Age of Enlightenment or the Age of Reason;[1] in French: le Siècle des Lumières, lit. '"the Century of Lights"'; and in German: Aufklärung, "Enlightenment")[2] was an intellectual and philosophical movement that dominated the world of ideas in Europe during the 18th century, "The Century of Philosophy".[3]

The Enlightenment included a range of ideas centred on reason as the primary source of authority and legitimacy and came to advance ideals like liberty, progress, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and separation of church and state.[4][5] In France, the central doctrines of the Enlightenment philosophers were individual liberty and religious tolerance, in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. The Enlightenment was marked by an emphasis on the scientific method and reductionism, along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy—an attitude captured by the phrase Sapere aude, "Dare to know".[6]

French historians traditionally place the Enlightenment between 1715 (the year that Louis XIV died) and 1789 (the beginning of the French Revolution). Some recent historians begin the period in the 1620s, with the start of the scientific revolution. Les philosophes (French for "the philosophers") of the period widely circulated their ideas through meetings at scientific academies, Masonic lodges, literary salons, coffee houses and in printed books and pamphlets. The ideas of the Enlightenment undermined the authority of the monarchy and the Church and paved the way for the political revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries. A variety of 19th-century movements, including liberalism and neo-classicism, trace their intellectual heritage back to the Enlightenment.[7]

The Age of Enlightenment was preceded by and closely associated with the scientific revolution.[8] Earlier philosophers whose work influenced the Enlightenment included Bacon, Descartes, Locke, and Spinoza.[9] The major figures of the Enlightenment included Beccaria, Diderot, Hume, Kant, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Adam Smith, and Voltaire. Some European rulers, including Catherine II of Russia, Joseph II of Austria and Frederick II of Prussia, tried to apply Enlightenment thought on religious and political tolerance, which became known as enlightened absolutism.[10]Benjamin Franklin visited Europe repeatedly and contributed actively to the scientific and political debates there and brought the newest ideas back to Philadelphia. Thomas Jefferson closely followed European ideas and later incorporated some of the ideals of the Enlightenment into the Declaration of Independence (1776). One of his peers, James Madison, incorporated these ideals into the United States Constitution during its framing in 1787.[11]

The most influential publication of the Enlightenment was the Encyclopédie (Encyclopaedia). Published between 1751 and 1772 in thirty-five volumes, it was compiled by Diderot, d'Alembert (until 1759) and a team of 150 scientists and philosophers. It helped spread the ideas of the Enlightenment across Europe and beyond.[12] Other landmark publications were Voltaire's Dictionnaire philosophique (Philosophical Dictionary; 1764) and Letters on the English (1733); Rousseau's Discourse on Inequality (1754) and The Social Contract(1762); Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations(1776); and Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws (1748). The ideas of the Enlightenment played a major role in inspiring the French Revolution, which began in 1789. After the Revolution, the Enlightenment was followed by the intellectual movement known as Romanticism.

Polysemy and Homonymy

Homonymy and Polysemy

This handout contains a brief explanation of homonymy and polysemy. It is

intended to supplement the discussion on pages 130-132 of the textbook, not

replace it.

• A word is polysemous if it can be used to express different meanings.

The difference between the meanings can be obvious or subtle.

• Two or more words are homonyms if they either sound the same

(homophones), have the same spelling (homographs), or both, but do

not have related meanings.

• In other words, if you hear (or read) two words that sound (or are

written) the same but are not identical in meaning, you need to decide

if it’s really two words (homonyms), or if it is one word used in two

different ways (polysemy).

• The only real way we have of telling the two apart is by applying our

judgement. There are no tests that can tell them apart in a foolproof

manner. Still, for many cases this is enough.

• There are, however, many other cases for which this decision is not

clear. This doesn’t mean that they are both or halfway between each;

that makes no sense, because a word can’t be both one word and two

words. Rather, it means that one of the following options holds:

1. Different speakers treat the word differently. It might be one word

for me but two for you.

2. We are dealing with two homonyms, but there is enough overlap

between them.

3. We are dealing with one word whose different uses are relatively

far enough apart.

1. A clear case of homonymy 1: The word down in sentence (1-a) and

the word down in sentence (1-b). These are two words that happen to

share sound and spelling. There is no relation between them:

(1) a. Sarah climbed down the ladder.

b. Sarah bought a down blanket.

2. A clear case of homonymy 2: The word bark in sentence (2-a) and

the word Bark in sentence (2-b).

(2) a. My dog would always bark at mailmen.

b. The tree’s bark was a rusty brown.

3. A clear case of polysemy 1: The word Newpaper in the following

sentences. The object that got wet cannot fire people, and the company

didn’t get wet. Still, it’s obvious that the same word is used to refer to

them both.

(3) a. The newspaper got wet in the rain.

b. The newspaper fired some of its editing staff.

4. A clear case of polysemy 2: The word Good in the following two

examples. In one case it’s a moral judgement, in the other case it’s a

judgement of skill.

(4) a. John was a good man. He donated a lot of money to charity.

b. Bill was a good painter. His drawings always were exciting

to look at.

5. Unclear case 1: Hammer in sentence (5-a) is a noun referring to

a physical object. Hammer in sentence (5-b) is a verb describing an

action normally (but not in this case) performed with that object. Is

this one word or two? Different people may disagree.

(5) a. I own a big heavy hammer.

b. I hammered the tent pole into the ground using a small

rock.

6. Unclear case 2: The word bright in the following two sentences. The

meanings are clearly not the same, but is it one word that is used

metaphorically in (6-a) and literally in (6-b), or are these two different

words?

(6) a. Laura was a very bright student and always got good grades.

b. The lights in this room are very bright.

17. Classification of homonyms

HOMONYMS

Homonyms are words different in meaning but identical in sound or spelling, or both in sound and spelling.

Homonyms can appear in the language not only as the result of the split of polysemy, but also as the result of levelling of grammar inflexions, when different parts of speech become identical in their outer aspect, e.g. «care» from «caru» and «care» from «carian». They can be also formed by means of conversion, e.g. «to slim» from «slim», «to water» from «water». They can be formed with the help of the same suffix from the same stem, e.g. «reader»/ a person who reads and a book for reading/.

Homonyms can also appear in the language accidentally, when two words coincide in their development, e.g. two native words can coincide in their outer aspects: «to bear» from «beran»/to carry/ and «bear» from «bera»/an animal/. A native word and a borrowing can coincide in their outer aspects, e.g. «fair» from Latin «feria» and «fair « from native «fager» /blond/. Two borrowings can coincide e.g. «base» from the French «base» /Latin basis/ and «base» /low/ from the Latin «bas» /Italian «basso»/.

Homonyms can develop through shortening of different words, e.g. «cab» from «cabriolet», «cabbage», «cabin».

Walter Skeat classified homonyms according to their spelling and sound forms and he pointed out three groups: perfect homonyms that is words identical in sound and spelling, such as : «school» - «косяк рыбы» and «школа» ; homographs, that is words with the same spelling but pronounced differently, e.g. «bow» -/bau/ - «поклон» and /bou/ - «лук»; homophones that is words pronounced identically but spelled differently, e.g. «night» - «ночь» and «knight» - «рыцарь».

Another classification was suggested by A.I Smirnitsky. He added to Skeat’s classification one more criterion: grammatical meaning. He subdivided the group of perfect homonyms in Skeat’s classification into two types of homonyms: perfect which are identical in their spelling, pronunciation and their grammar form, such as :»spring» in the meanings: the season of the year, a leap, a source, and homoforms which coincide in their spelling and pronunciation but have different grammatical meaning, e.g. «reading» - Present Participle, Gerund, Verbal noun., to lobby - lobby .

A more detailed classification was given by I.V. Arnold. She classified only perfect homonyms and suggested four criteria of their classification: lexical meaning, grammatical meaning, basic forms and paradigms.

According to these criteria I.V. Arnold pointed out the following groups: a) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings, basic forms and paradigms and different in their lexical meanings, e.g. «board» in the meanings «a council» and « a piece of wood sawn thin»; b) homonyms identical in their grammatical meanings and basic forms, different in their lexical meanings and paradigms, e.g. to lie - lied - lied, and to lie - lay - lain; c) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, paradigms, but coinciding in their basic forms, e.g. «light» / «lights»/, «light» / «lighter», «lightest»/; d) homonyms different in their lexical meanings, grammatical meanings, in their basic forms and paradigms, but coinciding in one of the forms of their paradigms, e.g. «a bit» and «bit» (from « to bite»).

In I. V. Arnold’s classification there are also patterned homonyms, which, differing from other homonyms, have a common component in their lexical meanings. These are homonyms formed either by means of conversion, or by levelling of grammar inflexions. These homonyms are different in their grammar meanings, in their paradigms, identical in their basic forms, e.g. «warm» - «to warm». Here we can also have unchangeable patterned homonyms which have identical basic forms, different grammatical meanings, a common component in their lexical meanings, e.g. «before» an adverb, a conjunction, a preposition. There are also homonyms among unchangeable words which are different in their lexical and grammatical meanings, identical in their basic foms, e.g. « for» - «для» and «for» - «ибо».

Dialects in old english

It is common to divide England into four dialect areas for the Old English period. First of all note that by England that part of mainland Britain is meant which does not include Scotland, Wales and Cornwall. These three areas were Celtic from the time of the arrival of the Celts some number of centuries BC and remained so well into the Middle English period.

The dialect areas of England can be traced back quite clearly to the Germanic tribes which came and settled in Britain from the middle of the 5th century onwards. There were basically three tribal groups among the earlier settlers in England: the Angles, the Saxons and the Jutes. The Angles came from the area of Angeln (roughly the Schleswig-Holstein of today), the Saxons from the area of east and central Lower Saxony and the Jutes from the Jutland peninsula which forms west Denmark today. The correlation between original tribe and later English dialect is as follows:

Germanic tribes and regions in England where they mainly settled

Saxons — South of the Thames (West Saxon area)
Angles — Middle and Northern England (Mercia and Northumbria), including lowland Scotland
Jutes — South-East of England (Kent)

Of these three groups the most important are the Saxons as they established themselves as the politically dominant force in the Old English period. A number of factors contributed to this not least the strong position of the West Saxon kings, chief among these being Alfred (late 9th century). The West Saxon dialect was also strongest in the scriptorias (i.e. those places where manuscripts were copied and/or written originally) so that for written communication West Saxon was the natural choice.

A variety of documents have nonetheless been handed down in the language of the remaining areas. Notably from Northumbria a number of documents are extant which offer us a fairly clear picture of this dialect area. At this point one should also note that the central and northern part of England is linguistically fairly homogeneous in the Old English period and is termed Anglia. To differentiate sections within this area one speaks of Mercia which is the central region and Northumbria which is the northern part (i.e. north of the river Humber).

A few documents are available to us in the dialect of Kent (notably a set of sermons). This offers us a brief glimpse at the characteristics of this dialect which in the Middle English period was of considerable significance. Notable in Kentish is the fact that Old English /y:/ was pronounced /e:/ thus giving us words like evil in Modern English where one would expect something like ivil.