CHAUCER'S USE OF DOUBLE AND MULTIPLE NEGATIVE CONSTRUCTIONS FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF EMPHATIC DEVICES IN "THE CANTERBURY TALES"

Multiple negation is a grammatical construction that can be found in the prose and poetry of Old and Middle English. There is much evidence to support the premise that Chaucer, in the Canterbury Tales, elevated the poetic use of such negative constructions to levels yet unsurpassed in English literature. Primarily used to emphasize or create ambiguity, Chaucer's negation often reveals more about a character than one would attain under normal circumstances. The General Prologue and The Nun's Priest's Tale both provide numerous examples of a phenomenon in which the application of multiple negation appears to be somewhat selective, adding to the complexity of certain characters, while other, "less interesting," characters remain relatively simple. Such grammatical selectivity developed into an emphatic device signaling that a great deal is going on beneath the negation.