ANNE SCHUURMAN. <i>The Theology of Debt in Late Medieval English Literature</i>

time.Her book traces the opposite of a tragic trajectory, leading from the challenges of achieving recognition, through grim examples of futility and absurdity, to a double triumph: the triumph of mutual recognition between lovers, and the triumph of Chaucer vindicating love itself.The final chapter's readings are infused with a sense of delight at this outcome, just as the previous chapter breathed rage.The prose style is passionate and charismatic throughout, and I found it refreshing to read scholarly work that dares to register an affective response to narratives of appalling suffering and dizzying joy.One achievement of this book is the way it gives readers permission to be moved by Chaucer's stories.Treating them as philosophical thought experiments does not, it turns out, attenuate their emotional resonance; on the contrary, this approach invites analogies to our own lived experiences as subjects navigating the world, such that Ashe's philosophical reading of Chaucer is also, and wonderfully, a personal one.