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Introduction: “Greet prees at Market”—Money Matters in Medieval English Literature Read chapter Read first chapter

2018 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

10. “Money Earned; Money Won”: The Problem of Labor Pricing in Gower’s “Tale of the King and the Steward’s Wife”

Author : Craig E. Bertolet

Published in: Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

This chapter reads Gower’s “Tale of the King and the Steward’s Wife” in Book 5 of Confessio Amantis as a tale of two transactions for the labor of the steward’s wife, with each transaction originating from one of two competing economic systems. The steward represents a cash-based economy while the king follows the economic practices of feudal relationships. The steward’s loss of his wife at the end of the tale does not mean that the cash-based economy is bad but that the steward has misunderstood the role of money, seeing it not as a medium of exchange but as a commodity itself.

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previous chapter The Need for Economy: Poetic Identity and Trade in Gower’s Confessio Amantis
next chapter Crossing the Threshold: Geoffrey Chaucer, Adam Smith, and the Liminal Transactionalism of the Later Middle Ages
Footnotes
1
In my reading, I will describe the system competing with feudalism as the cash-based commercial system rather than as pre-capitalism, an unhelpful term that associates the system with what it would become later instead of what it actually was.
 
2
See my analysis of commercial issues in Mirour de l’Omme in Bertolet (2013, 17–60).
 
3
All citations from Gower’s works come from Gower 1900–1. Translations from his Latin and French works are my own.
 
4
Le Roman des Sept Sages de Rome (1989).
 
5
For an examination of self-interest in gifts masking sexual labor, see Epstein (2015, 27–48).
 
6
Roger A. Ladd suggests that Gower interprets aristocratic gift-exchange in the Confessio as “honorable donation” but one still made in a commercial environment (2014, 229–44).
 
7
See also, Smith (2003, 123–5).
 
8
Edward III was clever enough to realize that he could derive income from taxes on the cash crop of wool passing in and out of England’s ports (Friehl 2012, 179).
 
9
See Farber’s analysis of Aristotle’s discussion of the importance of money as a measure (2006, 19–25).
 
10
See Kaye (1998, 65–68).
 
11
Simmel notes that “[m]oney is never an adequate mediator of personal relationships” (1978, 407).
 
Literature
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Simmel, Georg. 1978. The Philosophy of Money. Ed. and Trans. David Frisby. New York: Routledge.
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Spufford, Peter. 1988; rpt. 1991. Money and Its Use in Medieval Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Metadata
Title
“Money Earned; Money Won”: The Problem of Labor Pricing in Gower’s “Tale of the King and the Steward’s Wife”
Author
Craig E. Bertolet
Copyright Year
2018
Book
Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature

Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71899-6

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-71900-9

Copyright Year: 2018

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71900-9_10

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