The Gift of Narrative in Medieval England

The gift of narrative in medieval England places medieval narratives in dialogue with theories and practices of gift and exchange. It opens fresh approaches to questions of storytelling, agency, gender and materiality in some of the most engaging literature from the Middle Ages.

The book argues that the dynamics of the gift are powerfully at work in romances, through exchanges of objects and people; repeated patterns of love, loyalty and revenge; promises made or broken; and the complex effects of time. Ranging from the twelfth-century Romance of Horn to Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, it reads these poems alongside debates in anthropology and critical theory, asking such questions as: what role does the circulation of objects play in creating narratives? Do romance protagonists themselves act as gifts? And is storytelling itself a form of gift-giving?