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.

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