The Gift of Narrative in Medieval England - Paperback

by Nicholas Perkins (Author)

This critical study of medieval English romances uses ideas from anthropology and critical theories of the gift to shed light on narratives ranging from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Written in a style accessible for students as well as scholars, it engages with questions about storytelling, agency, gender and material objects.

Back Jacket

'Nicholas Perkins's book is itself a gift, in which the elusive phenomenon of the gifted object has found its ideal, answering intelligence: lucidly scrupulous, attuned as much to the book as gift as to the gift in books and ready to draw as much on anthropology as on the material history of the book. Like all gifts, it's radiant.'
James Simpson, Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English, Harvard University

'A wonderful exploration of the ways medieval romances circulate gifts, people, bodies and obligations that are both emotional and social. This incisive study develops the concept and practice of speculative anthropology, balancing theoretical insight with keen textual analysis.'
Stephanie Trigg, Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor of English, University of Melbourne

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?

Author Biography

Nicholas Perkins is Associate Professor and Tutor in English at St Hugh's College, University of Oxford