The "alderbeste yifte": Objects and the Poetics of Munificence in Chaucer's "The Book of the Duchess."

Description: Adapts the "gift theory" of Jacques Derrida; considers the historical context of the marriage of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster; and focuses on the scene of White's ring-giving (as reported by the Black Knight), considering the poem itself as a gift. Argues that BD portrays White as the "exalted (but silent and absent) gift-giver" in BD and that the poem "transmutes into fiction" the "performance of gifts" of the historical marriage.