Chapter 41 - The Economy

Summary

Chaucer, writing for an upper-class audience, satirises the productive base of society, peasants and cottagers, by idealising their frugality and sense of social duty, leaving the reader to contrast these qualities with their perceived selfish acquisitiveness. In dealing with the landed aristocracy, the poet criticises them (without irony) for their exploitation of their tenants, and reminds them satirically that the managers of their landed estates were cheating them. Landed magnates and gentry were engaged in mundane routines of land management, and Chaucer indulges their escapist fantasy of living in ideal places, man-made paradises in gardens and parks. The economy depended on rural production envigorated by commerce, especially with industrial growth after 1350. Chaucer, himself a townsman, wrote about the traders and professionals who functioned in a complex urban environment. He refers to money, credit and contracts, and some of his plots hinge on bargains made and broken.