Pathetic speech in “Canterbury Tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer

Abstract

This article is dedicated to the peculiarities of pathetic language in Geoffrey Chaucer's “Canterbury Tales” and rhetorical techniques used for saturating the speech of the narrator and the characters. On the example of the “Man of Law's Tale” and the “Second Nun’s Tale”, in which the vicissitudes of the heroines are in the limelight, the author of this article examines the specificity of pathetic speech and its functions in Chaucer’s text. The goal of this research lies in determination of the cause for using pathetic speech in these two tales. Research methodology employs structural, semantic, and historical-cultural methods of analysis of the literary text. The scientific novelty consists in reference to the analysis of rhetorical techniques in the poetics of Geoffrey Chaucer reflected in the context of the categories of tragic and pathetic, which have not been thoroughly studied in the Russian and foreign research tradition. The following conclusions were made: the abundance of pathetic speech is a means to draw the attention of audience; its heightened expansiveness allows reaching the expected emotional response. In most instances, pathetic speech is associated with the positive characters of the tales, as well as the narrator, who comments on the actions of the heroes and emphasizes the touching episodes in their lives. The speech of the negative characters in these two tales is rather neutral, and in some cases replaced by the speech of the narrator. Granting the word to the negative characters, Chaucer means expansion of their role, allowing the audience to look at them not only as the minister of evil.