MINISTRY OF EDUCATION, SCIENCE, YOUTH AND SPORT OF UKRAINE
IVAN FRANKO NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF LVIV
THE FACULTY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGES

LINGUISTIC MEANS OF POTRAYING MAIN CHARACTERS IN
“THE CANTERBURY TALES” BY GEOFFREY CHAUCER

COURSE PAPER
PRESENTED BY
LILIA YAREMA a fourth year student of the English department

SUPERVISED BY
SPODARYK O. V. an assistant professor of the English department

LVIV 2012

TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………… 3-4
CHAPTER I. THEORETICAL ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS…… 5-16 1.1 Linguistic analysis……………………………………………… 5-8 1.2 Discourse and Text analyses….…………….………………….. 9-11 1.3 Stylistic analysis ………………………………………………… 12-16
CHAPTER II. LINGUISTIC ANALYSIS OF CHAUCER’S CHARACTERS 17-28 2.1 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” ……………………………………… 18-22 2.2 “The Pardoner’s Tale” ………………………………………….. 23-28
CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………. 29-30
REFERENCES...… ………………………………………………………….. 31-32

INTRODUCTION

The theme of the course paper is “Linguistic means of portraying main characters in “The Canterbury tales” by Geoffrey Chaucer”.
This paper intends to make an analysis of the language in the collection of stories “The Canterbury Tales”, written by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of 14th century. We will analyze the language used to describe characters. It was based on the idea that every choice made by the author of a sentence is meaningful. Therefore, once we understand the choices the author makes when describing a character, we are able to have a better understanding of what this author expects of the readers. Geoffrey Chaucer is recognized as one of England’s greatest poets. He is the “Father of English Literature” who demonstrated the potential of Middle English as a literary language. “The Canterbury Tales” ranks as one of the greatest poetic works in English.