Abstract
This chapter evaluates the ideas of earning and spending in the fourteenth-century poem Wynnere and Wastoure by considering the interreliant nature of an economy. The economic thought that runs through the poem brings to the forefront the idea that an economy is ultimately a collection of individuals exchanging together in the market and that the actions of those individuals can affect the economy at large. Immoderate winning may help protect one’s household against future scarcity but in doing so it can harm others involved in that economy. The shift into an exchange economy here does not supplant social obligations, as antimercantile perspectives fear, but instead forms new methods of understanding and properly performing exchange in the interest of interpersonal relationships.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Trigg (1989) plots the shifting of class and rhetorical positions in the poem.
- 2.
Golden Mean narratives, in their Aristotelian context, are discussed in more detail below.
- 3.
For more on this transition, see Dyer (2002) and Nightingale (2007). Both Dyer and Nightingale trace shifting trade dynamics in late medieval England, particularly in urban centers, ultimately arguing that those best able to adjust to shifting trade and money practices in this period were most likely to succeed (Dyer 2002, 303–9). Nightingale further argues that this is why London succeeded as a trade center in a period where other, previously stronger trade ports, saw great economic decline, perhaps because “two of the great afflictions of the late medieval economy, plague and a shortage of coin, worked with royal policy and warfare to foster the conditions which made possible London’s later extraordinary growth” (Nightingale 2007, 106). However, it should be noted that market activity in the countryside was also important to the economic development of late medieval England; see Postan (1972, 207).
- 4.
Little (1983) suggests that the growing exchange economy in late medieval England fractured social bonds by having individuals conduct labor for wages instead of communal responsibilities, leading to “acute problems involving impersonalism, money , and moral uncertainty” (19). Howell (2010) complicates this dynamic by suggesting that the social capital of gifts did not lessen with the rise of an exchange economy, arguing that at times the social bonds formed through gift exchange exceeded the value of the gift itself (146).
- 5.
Armstrong (2016) notes how modern economic perceptions have shifted our focus from individuals in exchange to larger economic mechanisms, suggesting that “the study of the moral economy that descends from the scholastics can help us call into question the notion of an economy based fundamentally on debt and speculation, and the whole idea of an economic order that subordinates humanity and nature to the profit of a tiny majority” (30–1).
- 6.
Newhauser (2000) plots how attitudes toward money and avarice shifted over the late medieval period, settling around matters where greed leads to social harm, including Clement of Alexandria’s designation of avarice as “wealth that is not governed well, which is to say, not put to the use of one’s neighbor” (11).
- 7.
I use social capital in the manner that Pierre Bourdieu defines it, as “the sum of the resources, actual or virtual, that accrue to an individual or a group by virtue of possessing a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition” (1992, 119). In the fashion of generative expenditure that Smith outlines, the act of exchange fosters these networks as participants in the market to form relationships through exchange. Bourdieu views the resultant capital as another methodology for elite agents to entrench themselves and others like them in positions of power, and we can see this at play in the King’s judgment in Wynnere and Wastoure, which I treat below. Putnam, on the other hand, views social capital as beneficial to society, suggesting that “when economic and political dealing is embedded in dense networks of social interaction, incentives for opportunism and malfeasance are reduced” (2002, 7). My point here is that the social capital developed between participants of exchange reflects a more socially generative act than that of hoarding .
- 8.
- 9.
Aristotle discusses the Golden Mean in the Nicomachean Ethics: “The equal part is a sort of mean between excess and deficiency; and I call mean in relation to the thing whatever is equidistant from the extremes” (2004, 40, translator’s emphasis). For Aristotle, the Golden Mean is a geometric concept rather than arithmetical, that is, the Golden Mean is measured relative to the individual circumstances surrounding its particular application, rather than an overriding Platonic ideal that each individual should aspire to: “mean in relation to us that which is neither excessive nor deficient, and this is not one and the same for all” (40). Wood notes how this concept is applied to late medieval arguments on just exchange, observing that ideal systems of exchange are “intermediate between acting unjustly and being unjustly treated; for the one is to have too much and the other too little. Justice is a kind of mean … because it relates to an intermediate amount, while injustice relates to the extremes” (2002, 71).
- 10.
- 11.
The miser figure is first used as a demonstration of avarice by Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, who describes the miser through “a series of external signs which all point up his fear and anxiety at the thought of giving up some of the immeasurable wealth which he thought would bring him security” (Newhauser 2000, 16). Gregory the Great builds on this example and further points out areas in which the “miserliness cloaks itself under the name of frugality” (Newhauser, 104).
- 12.
See below.
- 13.
Johnson suggests that part of Wastoure’s strategy here is to mark the act of hoarding as wasteful, undercutting Wynnere’s argumentative position and comprising a demurrer legal defense for Wastoure (2012, 463–4).
- 14.
Kaye notes that medieval theories of money held that “[m]oney was invented so that it could be the medium and measure of all goods in exchange” (1998, 139). Money only possesses value as long as it remains in exchange; once removed from exchange, money’s use value is rendered null.
- 15.
Wood briefly discusses this interdependent dynamic between Wynnere and Wastoure, noting that they are ultimately part of the same mercantile ecosystem (2002, 121–3). Hole’s brief discussion on the text suggests that “if merchants spend as lords do, wealth ‘trickles down’ and everyone prospers” (2016, 124).
- 16.
Ginsberg’s notes plot the allusion to Matthew’s Judgment of the Sheep and the Goats here, emphasizing the need for charitable acts in the Christian ethical structure. More than not acting charitably, however, Wastoure implies that Wynnere’s hoarding directly harms others by denying them of currency needed to operate in the market .
- 17.
Wastoure also contends that the natural state of the world is dependent on these hierarchies (384–8). If the purpose of the lower creatures of an ecosystem is to serve the higher creatures, then the subservient role of the lower classes operates within nature.
- 18.
See Rackham (2001).
- 19.
While “wyfes” here is plural, I take it as a general comment about wives owing to the allegorical nature of these figures. It is possible, however, that this refers to Wastoure’s women, not his wife. Yet, this reading does not detract significantly from my argument and still leans toward the contractual nature of the relationship between Wastoure and his “leman.”
- 20.
The Middle English Dictionary defines “slabbande” here as a form of “slechen” or drooping sleeves.
- 21.
See Baldwin (1926).
- 22.
Ermine lining, as well as other furs, were restricted by social standing in the Sumptuary Law of 1363, following the Italian and French laws of the same sort. In her dissertation on medieval fashion, Wilson (2011) discusses how these laws specified fur and other displays of wealth according to class and how this developed into broader fashion trends.
- 23.
See the above note on Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics. The valuation of exchange that occurs between husband and wife, Wastoure contends, cannot be relegated to an abstract measure of just exchange and, accordingly, can only be properly measured by the participants of that marital exchange.
- 24.
In this sense, I refer to the lady’s ability to encourage the lord to be “bolde and bown with brandes to smytte” (431), rather than literal support in battle. While some romances do have wives take arms alongside their husbands, this is not a common role for women in Middle English texts.
Works Cited
Aristotle. 2004. The Nichomachean Ethics. Trans. F. H. Peters. New York: Penguin.
Armstrong, Lawrence. 2016. The Idea of a Moral Economy: Gerard of Siena on Usury, Restitution, and Prescription. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Baldwin, Frances Elizabeth. 1926. Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England. Baltimore: John Hopkins Press.
Bestul, Thomas H. 1974. Satire and Allegory in Wynnere and Wastoure. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Bourdieu, Pierre and Loïc J. D. Wacquant. 1992 An Invitation to Reflexive Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Breen, Katherine. 2012. “The Need for Allegory: Wynnere and Wastoure as an Ars Poetica.” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 26, no. 1: 187–229.
Dyer, Christopher. 2002. Making a Living in the Middle Ages: The People of Britain 850–1520. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Harrington, David V. 1986. “Indeterminacy in ‘Winner and Waster’ and ‘The Parliament of the Three Ages.’” The Chaucer Review 20, no. 3: 246–257.
Harwood, Britton J. 2006. “Anxious Over Peasants: Textual Disorder in Winner and Waster.” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 36, no. 2: 291–319.
Hersh, Cara. 2010. “‘Wyse wordes withinn’: Private Property and Public Knowledge in Wynnere and Wastoure.” Modern Philology 107, no. 4: 507–527.
Hole, Jennifer. 2016. Economic Ethics in Late Medieval England. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
Howell, Martha C. 2010. Commerce Before Capitalism in Europe, 1300–1600. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Jacobs, Nicolas. 1985. “The Typology of Debate and the Interpretation of Wynnere and Wastoure.” The Review of English Studies 36, no. 144: 481–500.
James, Jerry D. 1964. “The Undercutting of Conventions in Wynnere and Wastoure.” Modern Language Quarterly 25, no. 3: 243–258.
Johnson, Eleanor. 2012. “The Poetics of Waste: Medieval English Ecocriticism.” PMLA 127, no. 3: 460–476.
Kaye, Joel. 1998. Economy and Nature in the Fourteenth Century: Money, Market Exchange, and the Emergence of the Scientific Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Little, Lester. 1983. Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy in Medieval Europe. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Matthews, Jana. 1999. “The Case for Misprison in Wynnere and Wastoure.” Notes and Queries 46, no. 3: 317–321.
Newhauser, Richard. 2000. The Early History of Greed. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Nightingale, Pamela. 2007. Trade, Money, and Power in Medieval England. Aldershot: Ashgate Variorum.
Pearsall, Derek. 1977. Old English and Middle English Poetry. Boston: Routledge & K. Paul.
Postan, M. M. 1972 The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages. London: Penguin.
Putnam, Robert D. 2002 Democracies in Flux: The Evolution of Social Capital in Contemporary Society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Rackham, Oliver. 2001. Trees and Woodland in the British Landscape: The Complete History of Britain’s Trees, Woods & Hedgerows. London: Phoenix Press.
Robertson, Kellie. 2006. The Laborer’s Two Bodies: Labor and the “Work” of the Text in Medieval Britain, 1350–1500. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Smith, D. Vance. 2003. Arts of Possession: The Middle English Household Imaginary. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Stillwell, Gardiner. 1941. Wynnere and Wastoure and the Hundred Years’ War. A Journal of English Literary History 8(4): 241–247.
Trigg, Stephanie. 1989. “The Rhetoric of Excess in Winner and Waster.” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 3, no. 1: 91–108.
Westphal, Allan. 2001. “Issues of Personification and Debate in Wynnere and Wastoure.” English Studies 82, no. 6: 481–496.
Wilson, Laurel Ann. 2011. “‘De Novo Modo’: The Birth of Fashion in the Middle Ages.” PhD Dissertation, Fordham University.
Wood, Diana. 2002. Medieval Economic Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Wynnere and Wastoure and The Parlement of the Thre Ages. 1992. Ed. Warren Ginsberg. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Sweeten, D. (2018). “Whoso wele schal wyn, a wastour moste he fynde”: Interreliant Economies and Social Capital in Wynnere and Wastoure . In: Bertolet, C., Epstein, R. (eds) Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71900-9_3
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71900-9_3
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-71899-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-71900-9
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)