Acknowledgements

My debt of gratitude has been accruing for many years, but it is one that I am happy to owe. The research and writing of this book were supported by a generous grant from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The line of inquiry that ended up here began at the University of Alberta when I was finishing my doctoral dissertation on shame and guilt in Chaucer’s narrative poetry, and for this I am grateful to Stephen R. Reimer; his insightful comments and questions, many of which I had no answers for at the time, brought me to the right point of departure. I would like to thank Andrew Galloway for chairing a fruitful session on economics and Middle English literature at the IMC in Leeds and Kara Gaston for inviting me to speak at the University of Toronto’s Premodern Research Symposium, where I received kind encouragement and excellent questions about the Middle English charter lyrics. At the University of Western Ontario, I am grateful to my colleagues for their support and helpful comments on various aspects of the project, particularly Jane Toswell, Richard Moll, Alison Conway, Bryce Traister, Kate Stanley, Mary Helen McMurran, and Matthew Rowlinson. Warmest thanks to Emily Pez and Rebecca Power for their careful eyes and meticulous work in copy-editing the book and preparing the index. Emily Hockley and George Laver at Cambridge University Press were amiably supportive during the review process and have guided the book to production with unfailing competence. The book was greatly improved thanks to the astute and generous suggestions of two anonymous readers for the Press. I am continually dazzled and humbled by the learnedness and integrity of my fellow medievalists.

I would like to thank my father Henry Schuurman for the general and the particular – for being my first teacher and for invaluable conversations about debt, the Franciscans, and the nature of money. To Sofia, Isabel, and Ada, I am deeply and affectionately thankful for the gift of perspective.

Finally, the debt I owe to my wife Zoë Sinel, my ideal interlocutor, my most incisive and faithful reader, is truly measureless. Every good idea took shape in our conversations. Any errors or oversights that remain are mine alone.