Chaucer's Gifts

Exchange and Value in the Canterbury Tales

Robert Epstein (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

256 Seiten

2018
University of Wales Press (Verlag)
978-1-78683-168-2 (ISBN)

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Chaucer's Gifts applies the theoretical approaches of economic anthropology to the Canterbury Tales, to show that in Chaucer's world the exchange of gifts is as prevalent as the purchase of commodities, and that social relations are as important as money and the market.

Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the most celebrated literary work of medieval England, portrays the culture of the late Middle Ages as a deeply commercial environment, replete with commodities and dominated by market relationships. However, the market is not the only mode of exchange in Chaucer's world or in his poem. Chaucer's Gifts reveals the gift economy at work in the tales. Applying important recent advances in anthropological gift theory, it illuminates and explains this network of exchanges and obligations. Chaucer's Gifts argues that the world of the Canterbury Tales harbours deep commitments to reciprocity and obligation which are at odds with a purely commercial culture, and demonstrates how the market and commercial relations are not natural, eternal, or inevitable - an essential lesson if we are to understand Chaucer's world or our own.

Robert Epstein is Professor of English at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Connecticut. He has published widely on Chaucer and late medieval English literature.

Acknowledgements
Introduction: Chaucer's Commodities, Chaucer's Gifts
1 The Franklin's Potlatch and the Plowman's Creed: The Gift
in the General Prologue
2 The Lack of Interest in the Shipman's Tale: Chaucer and
the Social Theory of the Gift
3 Giving Evil: Excess and Equivalence in the Fabliau
4 The Exchange of Women and the Gender of the Gift
5 Sacred Commerce: Clerics, Money and the Economy of
Salvation
6 `Fy on a thousand pound!' Debt and the Possibility
of Generosity in the Franklin's Tale
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Erscheint lt. Verlag	15.2.2018
Zusatzinfo	No
Verlagsort	Wales
Sprache	englisch
Maße	138 x 216 mm
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
Themenwelt	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
ISBN-10	1-78683-168-6 / 1786831686
ISBN-13	978-1-78683-168-2 / 9781786831682
Zustand	Neuware