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Chaucer and the Gift (If There Is Any)

Chaucer and the Gift (If There Is Any) by Britton J. Harwood F Chaucer meant the two narratives in the fifth fragment of the Canterbury Tales to play against each other, one perhaps interesting way they do so is to make a problem of the gift.1 The Squire's Tale­ Franklin's Tale sequence not only ends, of course, with a question that seems to be about generosity (``Which was the mooste fre, as thynketh yow?''); it begins with magnificent gifts--the feast given by Genghis Khan (``Cambyuskan'') on his birthday and the four magic objects sent him by another king.2 Over the course of the fragment, the reader must not so much, I think, ``sort out Chaucer's sense of what it is to be `fre' '' 3 as follow Chaucer's sorting it out. Jacques Derrida has come close to putting the gift under erasure (``the gift, if there is any [s'il y en a]''). In his 1 Fragment 5 is ``manifestly a unity'': Brian Lee, ``The Question of Closure in Fragment V of The Canterbury Tales,'' Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992): 190. Cf. Jerome Mandel, Geoffrey Chaucer: Building the Fragments of the ``Canterbury Tales'' (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992), 100­1. That the Squire's Tale and http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Studies in Philology University of North Carolina Press

Chaucer and the Gift (If There Is Any)

Harwood, Britton J.
Studies in Philology , Volume 103 (1) – Jan 9, 2006
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Publisher
University of North Carolina Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2006 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia.
ISSN
1543-0383
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Abstract

by Britton J. Harwood F Chaucer meant the two narratives in the fifth fragment of the Canterbury Tales to play against each other, one perhaps interesting way they do so is to make a problem of the gift.1 The Squire's Tale­ Franklin's Tale sequence not only ends, of course, with a question that seems to be about generosity (``Which was the mooste fre, as thynketh yow?''); it begins with magnificent gifts--the feast given by Genghis Khan (``Cambyuskan'') on his birthday and the four magic objects sent him by another king.2 Over the course of the fragment, the reader must not so much, I think, ``sort out Chaucer's sense of what it is to be `fre' '' 3 as follow Chaucer's sorting it out. Jacques Derrida has come close to putting the gift under erasure (``the gift, if there is any [s'il y en a]''). In his 1 Fragment 5 is ``manifestly a unity'': Brian Lee, ``The Question of Closure in Fragment V of The Canterbury Tales,'' Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992): 190. Cf. Jerome Mandel, Geoffrey Chaucer: Building the Fragments of the ``Canterbury Tales'' (Rutherford, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1992), 100­1. That the Squire's Tale and

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Studies in Philology – University of North Carolina Press

Published: Jan 9, 2006

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