Roger Ladd, Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature.

Ladd, Roger. Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature. New York: Palgrave, 2010. Print.

           Roger Ladd's Antimercantilism in Late Medieval English Literature sets out to correct an error the author sees in current scholarship of Middle English literature, namely the omission of merchants. Ladd indicates that this is beginning to change, but makes a moderately compelling case that scholarship is both explicitly and implicitly predisposed to the three estates model, jumbling merchants into either those who fight, pray, or work depending on the specific needs of critics, who often focus on a sole estate for their studies. Ladd pronounces that he, too, will focus on a single estate, but rather than follow the three estates paradigm he will focus on merchants as an individual estate. 

Ladd's text does a fair job of plotting out the liminal position of merchants, who often straddled various social strata throughout their lives. Even forming an in depth discussion of how guilds, craft and charitable, shaped the merchant's identity, Ladd works in his first chapter to carve out the position and role of the merchant estate. With this model in place, Ladd reads the antimercantile sentimentes in Piers Plowman (Ladd argues that Langland's shifting use of economic language and ideology demonstrates the tension between spiritual and worldly economies), Gower's Mirour de l'Omne (Ladd argues that Gower's Mirour demonstrates the poet's own liminal position between merchant and gentry), and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (Ladd suggests that Chaucer performs the most subtle and effective critique of the mercantile estate). In the end, Ladd pitches that his text is more aimed at invigorating discussion on a largely neglected topic.

While I found Ladd's text to makes some interesting points on the social position of the late medieval merchant, I agree with Donald Leech's book review in that it seems to be missing Joel Kaye's Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century. Moreover, I would say that Ladd's text would benefit largely from more consideration of medieval economic thought, although this is somewhat unfair as some of the texts I would like to see brought in, such as Diana Wood's Medieval Economic Thought, date very close to or after Ladd's own text. Regardless, Ladd is so focused on the social standing of the merchant in his first chapter that, while providing an interesting perspective, seems to be missing a more full consideration of the shifting positions on merchants, a trend that Diana Wood covers in great detail. Regardless, Ladd's text is quite useful in considerations of late medieval merchants, especially in Middle English texts.

John Capgrave, Life of Saint Katherine

Capgrave, John. Life of Saint Katherine. Ed. Karen A. Winstead. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Pub., 1999. Print.

While it was a bit rough to power through in a couple of days, I must say that Capgrave's Life of St. Katherine may be one of my favorite medieval saints' lives. A very expanded version of the Stanzaic Life of St. Katherine, Capgrave's text explores the early development of the saint, her use of scholarship and rhetoric to avoid marriage, her covnersion to Christianity, and finally the more popular debate with fifty philosophers and eventual martyrdom. Throughout the text, Katherine remains a steadfast woman determined gain her objectives. I could wax on about the 8000 or so lines of the text, but there are predominately two items of particular interest for me. 

Civil Death and Katherine

Having just read Fowler's "Civil Death and the Maiden," I couldn't help but consider the issue of the potential of agency the unmarried maiden possesses in regards to Katherine. Per Fowler, part of the issue with Lady Mede is that she, unmarried, is pure potential of agency until she has made the choice to marry. The council that debates ad nauseum for Katherine to take on a husband is concerned about the dangers her lack of choice presents to the kingdom. Similar to Lady Mede, Katherine argues her own qualities, although Katherine does so to maintain autonomy rather than for the benefits of her marriage/use. In the conclusion of these debates, Katherine pulls out one of her better rhetorical flourishes, stating that if she is as great and beautiful as the overly courteous council has indicated, she can only marry one who outshines her in every respect. The only individual who could do so is of course Christ, and Katherine fulfills this in Book 3 with her wedding to Christ. Thinking back to Fowler's points about agency, it appears that while Katherine gains much in this marriage she is also giving up her agency, undergoing a civil death that will foreshadow her own martyrdom. Katherine is no less strong willed following this marriage, but after the ceremony Katherine learns of her own prophesied future which will include her martyrdom. Rather than having the agency of choice moving into her defying of Maxencius, Katherine's choices have now been made for her, dictated by her husband's greater legal agency. 

Economy of Kingship and Exogamy

Per my own interests, I couldn't help but notice the high prevalence of economic arguments, terms, and metaphors throughout Capgrave's text. Most explicitly, these show up in the debate between the council and Katherine on the proper action for the kingdom. In making the argument that Katherine's marriage will benefit the kingdom, Clarus echoes an earlier thought from the people: "All youre rychesse, what shall it us avayle / Hyd in youre cophyr and kept now thus close?" (2.351-352). Clarus suggests that a woman, in charge of the kingdom, will freeze the money supply, hindering the exchange of currency and the economy at large. This point is emphasized in a few more places, almost suggesting that women, by their nature, will accordingly disrupt the flow of trade. Katherine handles this argument nicely, but perhaps even more interesting is when this argument appears later from the final clerk, who is clearly a ringer, only in this case the argument involves Katherine's own sexual goods. 

"I trow thow Nature had coupled in o persone / All hir gyftis, as if sche wyll sche kan, / Than trowe I welle ye have hem all alone. / Of youre charyte, than, take to you summe man: Lete him have parte of swech thing as ye han. / Swech goodely gyftis wold not evyr be hyd - / If Nature were here, the same sche wold byd!" (2.1338-1340). 

According to this clerk, if Katherine does not marry she renders her own sexual goods without value, as currency loses value if it is withdrawn from the marketplace. Thus, the council is interested in maintaining the flow of goods, both in the market and in Katherine's own body, in order to support the stability and function of the Kingdom. 

On a final note, I appreciate the nod Capgrave gives his text in the opening of Book 3:

"Sith no man may here in this lyffe present / Doo no good dede but he enspyred by / Of that Goste whech fro the omnipotent / Fader of hevyn and fro the Sune so fre / Is sent to us,ryght so beleve now we / That it is best that we our laboure commende / Onto this Gost if we wyll have good ende" (3.1-6)

On one hand, this is classic modesty topos, Capgrave acknowledging the Holy Ghost for his skill, but Capgrave is also setting up a syllogism for his own text: 

A. All good work is inspired by God.

B. My work is good.

C. Therefore, my work is inspired by God. 

The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers

The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers. Ed. John William Sutton. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007. Print.

The TEAMS introduction to this text spends a fair amount of time discussing medieval wisdom literature, emphasizing that despite modern tastes on the matter this genre was hugely popular among medieval readers. Normally, I feel able to put my modern sensibilities to the side when approaching a text for the first time, but I must agree that wisdom literature is not the most exciting genre to read. The Dicts and Sayings of the Philosophers, which might have been the first book printed by Caxton, is along the lines of other wisdom literature, providing a conglomeration of stories from various philosophers and poets that almost universally descends into a rapid fire of pithy proverbs with little in the way of narrative, overall structure, or concurrent theme. In this respect, I'll keep this post relatively brief and focus on two of the sections that stood out to me. 

Homer: 

As a huge fan of the Iliad and Oddysey, I could not pass up what this text had to say about Homer. I'm continuously interested in what medieval authors thought of Homer, considering that his texts were not available in Europe until the Early Modern period, and most knowledge of the poet comes from Roman summaries of his texts. With that understanding, then, does it somewhat make sense that this text would depict Homer as an advocate of silence, several of his gnomic statements suggesting that the wise man is he who keeps his mouth shut. Considering the immense scope of Homer's texts, the grandiose verbage involved, and the extended use of Homeric similes - you know, the wordy ways to describe action in a text that was NAMED after Homer - it seems that the author of the Dicts was either less interested in an accurate depiction of Homer or that this was the summation of knowledge of the blind poet, which makes me more than a little sad. 

Aristotle:

The section on Aristotle is somewhat more interesting (and to be fair is seven times as long) that that on Homer. As with the other philosophers, this section has an initial biography on the philosopher. Unlike the others, however, the Aristotle section is somewhat extended, going on for nearly half the text if you include the fixation of his tomb. Furthermore, in this section Aristotle is depicted as a figure of persecution for learning. When choosing his lessons, Aristotle is ridiculed: "And somme othir were wysemen at that tyme as Pyctagoras, Pychoras, and many other, helde hem as for nothinge, and mokked hem that lerned thes sciencis, seyenge that suche sciences as gramer, rethoryk, and poetrye were nat covenable to gete any connynge where wysedam was inne; and that gramere was noughte but for to teche children, and poetry for to telle fables and compose lesynges, and rethoryk for to polysshe and make faire his wordes and sette hem pleasauntly togeder" (12-18). Throughout his career, according to this telling, Aristotle is looked down upon from his peers for his choices of learning, persecution that is eventually seen as mistaken after Aristotle's death; his tomb is seen as an excellent places to hold debates and reach clear decisions.

The majority of the text, however, is filled with Aristotle's advice to his most famous pupil, Alexander. Here, the text follows the model of other sections by spit-firing proverbs that run something like an extended mirror for princes, emphasizing justice and temperance in governance. At times this advice runs similarly along the lines of Aristotles Golden Mean, but there's nothing specific in place to tie this text to any of Aristotle's philosophy. The closing lines of this section were, for me, rather interesting;

"The worlde is lyke a gardeyne, wherof the dyches be lykened to realmes; and the realmes be maintened by the 
lawes whiche the kinge hath stablysshed. The kinge is mayntened by his knyghtes,   the knyghtes bene governed by money, the money cometh of the people, the  people is governed by justice. And so is all the world" (383-387). The suggestion of a system of circular social support does not coincide with the normal three estates model, but more to the point this system places nearly equal emphasis on all of its members due to the interdependent status of society. Furthermore, knights here are supported directly by money, emphasizing a more monetized social structure than other late medieval texts. It would be an interesting exercise to comb through the dicts for similar suggestions of social structure, to see if this is simply the identity the author is attempting to draft around Aristotle or if the author uses the philosophers to push his own sense of social interdependence.

Elizabeth Fowler, “Civil Death and the Maiden: Agency and the Conditions of Contract in Piers Plowman.”

Fowler, Elizabeth. “Civil Death and the Maiden: Agency and the Conditions of Contract in Piers Plowman.” Speculum, no 70.4 (Oct. 1995): 760-792. JSTOR. Web. 30 Nov. 2009.

Fowler's article provides and interesting reading of the Vision of Piers Plowman specifically considering how the idea of contract, economic thought, and "coverture" operate within the Lady Mede portions of the text. While Fowler's reading raises interesting points about how Langland may be using marriage as a larger metaphor of political contract, I find her section on civil death and marriage the most engaging and widely applicable. 

Fowler's first and largest section digs in to the issues of agency and marriage, considering both the intentional and functional levels of agency women were able to maintain before and after marriage, taking into consideration the various factors that could alter that agency throughout the process. Citing medieval church doctrine on marriage, Fowler considers how women maintained the agency of choice to enter marriage, but that upon doing so their agency, or Will, was subsumed by their husband's will.  (Fowler teases out the complex state of married agency in much greater detail, also bringing in discussions of marital debt and common law property to provide a clearer picture on the matter). The greatest potential for agency, then, lay with a woman's choice to enter marriage; Fowler argues that this is the source of Conscience's issue with Lady Mede, that she represents the pure potential of agency without the moral guidance to instill the proper final choices. Fowler ties this perspective to the economic angle of Lady Mede, suggesting that money also possesses no moral will of its own and can be equally used good or ill gains. This seems to tie to Diane Cady's point in "The Gender of Money," that women, like money, are likely to circulate outside of societal/patriarchal control if they are not properly regulated. 

Lynn Staley, Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II

Staley, Lynn. Languages of Power in the Age of Richard II. Pennsylvania State UP, 2006. Print.

Lynn Staley's monograph seeks to do two things predominantly: 1) to consider "the ways in whcih late-fourteenth-century English writers used, analyzed, and altered the languages of power" and 2) to "isolat(e) and trac(e) what is an actual search for a language of power during the reign of Richard II and scrutiniz(e) the ways in which Chaucer and other writers participated in these attempts to articulate the concept of princely power" (x). In short, Staley is interested in how the language of power during Richard II's rule changed in Middle English literature and what this change reflects about the political and cultural status of late medieval England. As, according to Staley, kingship during this period "lacked a defining rhetoric," Richard II sought out a language that could help him in his goal to consolidate power. Staley plots out how Richard II consciously tried to follow the model of Charles V (despite significant cultural differences that disallowed the same methodology), how both John of Gaunt and Thomas of Woodstock had more influential courts of cultural significance to Middle English literature, and how various writers such as Chaucer and the Pearl poet may be in the middle of such power dynamics. Staley takes on these topics with clear and detailed analysis, much of which is better summed up in the myriad of book reviews than I could effectively do here.

Instead, I'll focus on an aspect of Staley's text that stood out to me: her methodology. As Staley states in her preface, "This book, then, seeks to understand a period of English history by listening to its writers. Rather than isolate individual authors or types of literature, it portrays the world of late-fourteenth-century England as composed of discrete discourses that inevitably overlapped to form conversations we must listen to in order to understand the history of this period" (xii). Fitting in with John Watt's paradigm of overlapping discourses, Staley's approach  seeks less to historicize these authors or their literature than to consider what these texts say, when taken together, about the discourse of power in Ricardian England. Similarly, rather than historicizing texts for their economic elements, I want to consider texts that use economic language and metaphors in love/social/gender relations in order to better under understand the issues of concern for those authors. As Staley sets out to do, I'm more interested in seeing the conversation about gender and economics across a spectrum of Middle English literature rather than simply reading this approach into a small number of authors. 

Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle

Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle. Sir Gawain: Eleven Romances and Tales. Ed. Thomas Hahn. Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval    Institute Publications, 1995.

The matter of Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle seems to be pretty straightforward, but what that matter is trying to say is interesting. Overall, this short Middle English romance provides Gawain with the opportunity to show off that he put full points in his Diplomacy skill, which he not so subtly reminds everyone he can do as they approach the castle (163-174). In the castle proper, much seems to evoke Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, from the porter's challenge to the size of the Carle (two yards from shoulder to shoulder) to the interaction with the host's wive. What is important here, however, is that Gawain understands how to mitigate social differences. His companions, Kay and Baldwin, continuously act improperly because they assume the difference in their status and Carle's means that they can ignore social niceties. They eat without being invited to the table, pronounce that this provincial cottage certainly couldn't deny admittance to knights as great as they, and even attempt to prevent the foal from eating with their warhorses, a blatant attempt to institute the estates model boundaries. The Carle cares little for their boundaries, striking both of them (despite Baldwin's specific claim to clerical status) and sending them back inside. Gawain, knowing how to act properly, cares for the foal as if it were every bit as equal to his own warhorse (343-354). 

Up to this point, the text seems focused on how Gawain's courtesy is so effective that he willingly steps across social boundaries. Things get somewhat more muddled when the Carle invites Gawain to kiss his wife, and, as thanks for not pushing into heavy petting and beyond, grants the knight his daughter to have sex with as he pleases for the night. After this, the Carle pronounces that he'll no longer test knights in this manner, even showing Gawain the evidence of how he has slain the knights that fail his tests in the past, and is eventually made a knight of Arthur's court. 

What I find odd is what the poem is trying to say about social boundaries across the estates model. Is the idea that if knights treat the peasantry (or perhaps rising bourgeois class) as equals that same class will willingly lay down and grant their commodities (such as daughters and labor) to the first and second estates? It is perhaps simply a general tale to provide another instance for Gawain rising to the occasion on matters of courtesy, even  in socially transgressive situations, but nonetheless the social and economic politics demonstrated by their interactions stands out as somewhat odd; I'll need to come back and consider this later, perhaps in a larger context of what Gawain as a figure of courtesy represents in Middle English literature. 

• Gawain volunteers to make a Diplomacy check at the Carle's castle (163-174).
• Carle is two yards across the shoulders, large like the Green Knight.
• Carle self consciously announces he is but a carl/churl, yet he is obviously wealthy and powerful, playing with social boundaries
• The bishop attempts to institute social boundaries with the foal, the Carle puts the smack down. Doesn't care that the bishop is of clerical orders.
• 343-354: Gawain treats the foal as he would his own warhorse.
• 411-414: by stating Gawain can't have his daughter, the Carle actually sets up Gawain to attempt to win her.
• 451-468: Carle invites Gawain to kiss his wife, but stops the night before he can engage intercourse. Because Gawain did what he was supposed to, The Carle gives his daughter to Gawain for the night. 
• Carle gives up his wicked ways because Gawain did his bidding. So, as long as your kind to the peasantry they'll be placid and give you their stuff, including daughters and other commodities? 

Scott Miekle, Aristotle's Economic Thought

Meikle, Scott. Aristotle’s Economic Thought. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.

My process for reading critical monographs starts with pulling up a book review for said monograph. In doing so, I feel less stressed to scramble and figure out what the heck is going on in said text and can instead focus on grasping the argument and basis thereof. For Meikle's monograph, I happened to pull up a book review written by Spencer Park, and was it ever a doozy.  Taking on Miekle's book with a frankness and style that I feel junior scholars would see as career suicide, Park's final statement I feel is the most telling; "It is unusual to see such a large discrepancy between what an author has demonstrated and what he thinks he has demonstrated" (368). In sum, Park argues that Miekle sets out to disprove/discredit theoretical approaches that apply anachronistic economic theory to Aristotle's text while himself predominantly using Marx to read Aristotle's Nichomachean Ethics and Politics, itself (Marx) an anachronistic economic theory. Overall, Miekle's point is that Aristotle never really put forth economic theories and works diligently to disprove critical attempts to say Aristotle's texts in fact do. In this, much of what Park identifies as outright antagonism to modern economists can be seen in Miekle's text.

Moving outside of the cattiness and critical contention, Miekle's text is perhaps most useful for its readings of Aristotle's texts, focusing on those that scholars from antiquity forward have read for economic theory. Miekle's approach in many places reminds me of the kinds of moves a deconstructionist makes, close reading the primary text to identify ambiguities and contradictions contained therein. While I feel that Miekle, in the end, does much more tearing down than building up of ideas (which is generally a pet peeve of mine), his very close and attentive readings are, in the end, very strong close and attentive readings. For example, Miekle's first chapter does an excellent job of plotting what Aristotle's Ethics 5.5 says about use and exchange value, the critical work down thereupon, and the textual ambiguities that are tied up in Aristotle's text that have, in many cases, been simplified or ignored by later scholars. Miekle's explanations of these concepts are well structured, and do a strong job of exploring these issues. As such, the beginning sections of each of Miekle's chapters are very helpful in understanding Aristotle's economic texts more effectively. In addition to the Ethics itself I've read several critical readings of that text, and Miekle's still added much vital context to the text itself and how modern scholars have interpreted it.

The latter portions of these chapters, however, suffer from Miekle's obvious attempts to push his own agenda about economic theory. Focusing predominantly on countering critical discussion of Aristotle, Miekle relentlessly attempts to dismiss and debase any perspective that attempts to draw out economic theory from Aristotle's texts. In many ways, these portions come across something like this: