Overview
- Examines the role that gender ideology plays in the formation of medieval ideas about money and value
- Expands new economic criticism on the effects of the political economy to medieval authors and texts
- Traces the history of economy in the Middle Ages
Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages (TNMA)
Access this book
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Other ways to access
Table of contents (7 chapters)
-
Front Matter
-
Back Matter
Keywords
About this book
The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England explores the vital and under-examined role that gender plays in the conceptualization of money and value in a period that precedes and shapes what we now recognize as the discipline of political economy. Through readings of a range of late Middle English texts, this book demonstrates the ways in which gender ideology provided a vocabulary for articulating fears and fantasies about money and value in the late Middle Ages. These ideas inform beliefs about money and value in the West, particularly in realms that are often seen as outside the sphere of economy, such as friendship, love and poetry. Exploring the gender of money helps us to better understand late medieval notions of economy, and to recognize the ways in which gender ideology continues to haunt our understanding of money and value, albeit often in occluded ways.
Reviews
“Diane Cady writes with great sensitivity to the medieval texts and with such generosity to her readers. Cady’s prose is ever economical, lyrical, and humane as she explores the gendering of money and the valuing of gender in this lively, accessible, and genuine study of texts by Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, bridging the medieval to the modern in trenchant and compellingways.” (Michael Calabrese, Professor of English, California State University, Los Angeles, USA, and author of An Introduction to Piers Plowman (2016))
“The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature offers provocative readings of a well-selected set of English poems from the fourteenth- through the early sixteenth-century, in order to show that late-medieval portrayals of money and its uses were steeped in a distinctive range of gendered norms, postures, and metaphorical language, with consequences that inflect visions of both economics and gender to the present. The study excavates not only the misogyny, homophobia, and suppressed contradictions of social and sexual identity in this network of images and fictional relations, but also the poetic and rhetorical complexity of works by Chaucer, Lydgate, and others that elaborate those contemporary as well as very long-enduring issues.” (Andrew Galloway, James John Professor of Medieval Studies, Cornell University, USA)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: The Gender of Money in Middle English Literature
Book Subtitle: Value and Economy in Late Medieval England
Authors: Diane Cady
Series Title: The New Middle Ages
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26261-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-030-26260-0Published: 14 October 2019
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-26263-1Published: 14 October 2020
eBook ISBN: 978-3-030-26261-7Published: 01 October 2019
Series ISSN: 2945-5936
Series E-ISSN: 2945-5944
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: IX, 189
Number of Illustrations: 1 b/w illustrations
Topics: Medieval Literature, History of Medieval Europe, Gender Studies