ABSTRACT
Throughout Chaucer’s work we see a preoccupation with speech.1 Not only do characters speak; speech is also a theme, and its various functions and potential for expression, deception and manipulation fascinate Chaucer.2 The Canterbury Tales
1 Davenport, writing on parts of KnT, goes so far as to remark on ‘[t]he reduction of the function of narrative to that of providing the framework for rhetorical speech’; see Davenport, Complaint and Narrative, p. 98.
