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OverviewGeoffrey 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. Full Product DetailsAuthor: Robert EpsteinPublisher: University of Wales Press Imprint: University of Wales Press ISBN: 9781786831699ISBN 10: 1786831694 Pages: 256 Publication Date: 01 February 2018 Audience: Professional and scholarly , Professional & Vocational Format: Paperback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: Out of stock  The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available. Table of ContentsAcknowledgements 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 IndexReviews"""Engages in depth with a variety of theories of the Gift going back to Marcel Mauss, including those of theorists (familiar to literary study) Pierre Bourdieu and Jacques Derrida, but also incorporating much more recent thought in anthropology from a variety of sources, especially David Graeber. Along the way, Epstein provides a thoughtful reading of the Canterbury Tales, and a valuable corrective to many economic approaches to Chaucer's work."" -- ""The Medieval Review"" ""In this major study, Robert Epstein expertly and nimbly draws on (and intervenes in) gift theory to overturn a long tradition of Canterbury Tales criticism, demonstrating that, for Chaucer, social relations were not inevitably structured by the market - and neither are they for us. In this way, Epstein not only provides a more profound appreciation for the imaginative scope of the Tales, but also a more expansive grasp of social possibilities for the present."" --Robert Meyer-Lee, Agnes Scott College ""Deploying a wide range of anthropological theory rarely put before literary critics and students, Chaucer's Gifts unravels the critical assumption that The Canterbury Tales is dominated by the values of emerging Western commercialization. As an alternative, Epstein demonstrates how a more complex understanding of gift-exchange and social obligation is necessary to appreciate Chaucer's many-sided perspective. This book is an important contribution to the growing number of studies reassessing late-medieval literature's place in its economic settings, and an eloquent argument for using premodern literature to see in new ways the origins, paradoxes, and blindness of modern neo-liberal assumptions.""--Professor Andrew Galloway, Cornell University" Deploying a wide range of anthropological theory rarely put before literary critics and students, Chaucer's Gifts unravels the critical assumption that The Canterbury Tales is dominated by the values of emerging Western commercialization. As an alternative, Epstein demonstrates how a more complex understanding of gift-exchange and social obligation is necessary to appreciate Chaucer's many-sided perspective. This book is an important contribution to the growing number of studies reassessing late-medieval literature's place in its economic settings, and an eloquent argument for using premodern literature to see in new ways the origins, paradoxes, and blindness of modern neo-liberal assumptions. --Professor Andrew Galloway, Cornell University In this major study, Robert Epstein expertly and nimbly draws on (and intervenes in) gift theory to overturn a long tradition of Canterbury Tales criticism, demonstrating that, for Chaucer, social relations were not inevitably structured by the market - and neither are they for us. In this way, Epstein not only provides a more profound appreciation for the imaginative scope of the Tales, but also a more expansive grasp of social possibilities for the present. --Robert Meyer-Lee, Agnes Scott College Author InformationThis book will appeal to professional scholars as well as advanced undergraduates and postgraduate students. 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