Demonic Ambiguity: Debt in the Friar–Summoner Sequence.

Author / Editor
Schuurman, Anne.

Title
Demonic Ambiguity: Debt in the Friar–Summoner Sequence.

Published
Craig E. Bertolet and Robert Epstein, eds. Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 77-91.

Description
Examines relations between theology and economics in FrPT and SumPT (with glances at WBP and PardPT), focusing on the polysemous implications of debt, and suggesting that these tales are “key source texts” for modern “economic theology” (Weber to Agamben) that traces capitalism to Christianity, where "the penitential system operates as a bureaucratic economy," dependent upon "quantification and the imposition of debt" that must--but can never--be paid.

Alternative Title
Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature.

Chaucer Subjects
Friar and His Tale
Summoner and His Tale
Wife of Bath and Her Tale
Pardoner and His Tale