The introduction to this collection of ten essays by Craig Bertolet and Robert Epstein (1-10), with its short but sophisticated discussion of late medieval economic history, signals that the details of economic life in Chaucer's time will be taken seriously in the pieces that follow. As an historian of economic thought, I was pleased to see that many of the bibliographies at the end of each essay contain a proportion of recent works in medieval economic history and theory, in addition to recent work on the multiform reflections of economic life in literary texts. For the most part, the essays are short (10-12 pages) and are focused on particular economic ideas, understandings, and implications as they appear and are reflected within a single literary text (or single tale in the case of the Canterbury Tales). The direction and strength of the volume are best conveyed through summaries of each of the ten contributions.
Ch. 2: Rosemary O'Neill, "Judas and the Economics of Salvation in Medieval English Literature" (11-30). Most readers will not be surprised that Judas is often portrayed in medieval texts as a warning against the dangers of economic calculation and greed. What Rosemary O'Neill sets out to show, and does indeed show, is that at times his example is also used to "demonstrate the spiritual dangers of economic conservatism" (12), and even to illustrate the need for sharp economic calculation and speedy economic decision making on the part of Christian believers. To show this, she points to the rich and longstanding medieval theme of salvation as a great bargain offered by God to humans--an exchange in which, if one acts quickly and sharply, one can purchase the immeasurable profit of salvation for a trifle of satisfaction. In the later medieval sources she has found that pursue this theme, Judas is less condemned for his greed for money than ridiculed as a bad merchant and pitiful bargainer, selling something of inestimable value for a pittance.
Ch. 3: David Sweeten, "'Whoso wele schal wyn, a wastour moste he fynde': Interreliant Economies and Social Capital in Wynnere and Wastoure" (31-46). At the center of the incomplete poem, Wynnere and Wastour, is a debate between two modes of economic behavior, with Winner speaking on behalf of the excessive collection and accumulation of wealth, and Waster on behalf of lavish and excessive spending. While the author of the poem presents criticisms of both positions, for the most part his judgment comes down on the side of immoderate spending. Of particular interest to Sweeten are the arguments presented in support of Waster, which though not made with perfect clarity are nonetheless quite revealing of contemporary social and economic attitudes: spending, even to an excessive and seemingly wasteful degree, is nevertheless credited with benefitting the wider exchange community in a way that hoarding does not, and at the same time, spending serves the social purpose of strengthening social bonds and social hierarchies, while hoarding benefits only the individual hoarder.
Ch. 4: Elizabeth Harper, "'The ryche man hatz more nede thanne the pore': Economics and Dependence in Dives and Pauper" (47-58). Against the arguments of Dives, Pauper claims that he has no need of money since God will provide. He makes reference to the lilies of the field and, Harper suggests, Francis' sermons to the birds, to further privilege the advantages of economic dependence and vulnerability. Reasoning that the author was probably a Franciscan, Harper provides a good overview of the Order's position on poverty after Bonaventure, finding clear traces of scholastic insights from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in this literary debate over poverty. Particularly interesting is her discussion of Pauper's definition of "need," which she links to the highly sophisticated Aristotelian/scholastic notion of "indigentia," situated at the root of all economic exchange. It was Pauper's recognition of nede as (in Harper's words) "a flexible, subjective quality that motivates exchange of goods and services differently for different people" (53 ) that she locates behind his profound statement: "The ryche man hatz more nede than the pore."
Ch. 5: Robert Epstein, "Summoning Hunger: Polanyi, Piers Plowman, and the Labor Market" (59-76). In this essay, Epstein attempts to make sense of the economic attitudes expressed by Piers, particularly his harshness toward the peasantry of his day, his critique of their sloth and presumptuousness, and his support for the harsh measures contained in the Ordinance of Labourers of 1350 et seq., designed by king and parliament to force the peasantry to work at fixed wages set far below market levels. In his explanation of these positions, Epstein makes use of recent works in English economic history to elucidate the socio-economic situation following the black death, and he stretches yet further to argue that a reading of Polanyi's The Great Transformationcan provide a still deeper understanding of Piers' punishing stances on peasant labor.
Ch. 6: Anne Schuurman, "Demonic Ambiguity: Debt in the Friar-Summoner Sequence" (77-91). Schuurman begins by positing that the concept of debt in the Canterbury Talesis "a slippery, multivalent concept" (77), given that in Christian theology the human debt to God can never be repaid, even as it requires payment. Taking recourse to modern theory, Schuurman interrogates a series of ideas: that capitalist debt is a secularized form of Christian debt (Stimilli) and (following Walter Benjamin and Giorgio Agamben) that capitalism is "an essentially religious phenomenon" (78 ). From here the author turns to show the reflection of these propositions in Chaucer's treatment of debt, accomplished, in Schuurman's view, by his "reconceiv[ing] economics as a theological activity rather than as a mode opposed to theology" (80).
Ch. 7: Roger Ladd, "Death is Money: Buying Trouble with the Pardoner" (93-107). Ladd begins with a focus on the multiple murder sequence in the Pardoner's Tale, driven by the greed for gold. By his calculation, the amazing treasure over which the three murders occurred--eight bushels of gold coins--would have weighed between 3 and 5 tons. On this basis, he assumes that Chaucer intended the treasure to be taken by his readers as a "pure fantasy" of wealth, abstract and symbolic rather than material. He further assumes that Chaucer plays on this reversal to create "a contrast between the fantasy of materialism within the Tale, and the direct materialism of pardon sales and relic viewing in its frame" (100). Since the Pardoner's economic calculation would have appeared far more real and present to the Tale's readers, its lesson, in Ladd's view, is less to warn against the greed of the murderous thieves than to beware the greed of the Pardoners in their midst.
Ch. 8: Diane Cady, "My Purse and My Person: 'The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse' and the Gender of Money" (109-126). Cady presents here a richly layered gendered analysis of this poem. In her reading, Chaucer represents his purse as "a faithless, female lover" (109); draws an analogy "between the possession of money and the sexual possession of a woman" (110); imagines money as mirroring a woman in its essentially "promiscuous nature...prone to circulation and loss" (115); and all while treating the loss and lack of money in itself as an essentially feminizing position. She then folds these points into a yet larger argument: "In this period, the erotic and the economic, and their accompanying anxieties, are always entangled" (118).
Ch. 9: Brian Gastle, "The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower'sConfessio Amantis" (127-142). Gastle here interrogates the socio-economic identity that Gower both assumed for himself and projected into his writings. He reads the "Trump of Death" segment in Confessio, Book I, in the context of the poet's cognizance of two worlds, that of mercantile power gained through the control of liquid wealth, and of aristocratic power gained through the control of court patronage. He finds the "subtle coloring" of economic concerns throughout this narrative, and he then goes further to examine this coloring in Gower's self-understanding as a poet as well. As he writes: "More so than merely drawing upon or incorporating commercial and mercantile issues in his poetry--as he does with legal issues--Gower will struggle with the notion of poet as professional and of artistic production as work" (128).
Ch. 10: Craig Bertolet, "'Money Earned; Money Won': The Problem of Labor Pricing in Gower's 'Tale of the King and the Steward's Wife'" (143-156). In this essay, Bertolet examines Gower's story of the royal steward who prostitutes his wife to his king and then takes the payment (her wage) for himself. In many ways and from many angles (far beyond the most obvious) Bertolet shows how this exchange violated contemporary understandings of economic value, of the rules of economic behavior, and of the forms of economic justice, particularly with respect to the just rewards of labor. To show this, Bertolet makes use of sources contemporary with Gower, such as the Latin translations of Aristotle's Ethics and Politics as well as the writings of Nicole Oresme. But he also turns to modern literary and historical studies, and to Simmel's The Philosophy of Money, to deepen his analysis both of the exchange at the center of this tale and of Gower's more general exploration of the cash-based commercial economy that both he and his audience were required to navigate.
Ch. 11: Andrew Galloway, "Crossing the Threshold: Geoffrey Chaucer, Adam Smith, and the Liminal Transactionalism of the Later Middle Ages" (157-177). This concluding chapter by Galloway serves in a way as a conclusion to the volume as a whole. Its goal is to isolate and give shape to a socio-economic dynamic that (Galloway suggests) confronted every literary author of the Later Middle Ages and colored every literary product: i.e., the "threshold" between an older economy defined primarily by gift exchange and a newer one increasingly defined by commercial exchange. Where this clash of systems and values might be (and has been) assumed to lead to confusion and even crisis, Galloway takes a different view. Rather than emphasize the inherent contradictions between these forms of exchange, he focuses on the many situations in everyday life in which they appeared alongside each other, worked together, and, indeed, often complemented each other. His central point is to emphasize the creative ways late medieval culture as a whole, and its authors in particular, succeeded in a process he terms "liminal transactionalism," which is to say, deftly "shifting between" these two modes and exploiting the rich play between them.
Overall, this collection of rather short articles succeeds in revealing the increasing seriousness with which literary scholars of the late medieval period approach the socio-economic contexts in which their literature is produced. At the same time, it reveals their continuing success in excavating and bringing to light the myriad reflections of these contexts in the literature they study.