This study explores the relationship between ideology and subjectivity in late medieval literature, documenting the trajectory of antimercantile ideology against major developments in economic theory and practice in the later Middle Ages.

An Introduction to Late Medieval English Literary Merchants Langland's Merchants and the Material and Spiritual Economies of Piers Plowman The Mirour de l'Omme and Gower's London Merchants The Deliberate Ambiguity of Chaucer's Anxious Merchants Mercantile Voices of the Early Fifteenth Century The Mercers, Civic Power, and Charity in the York Cycle From Finchale to York: Are Merchants Respectable by 1500?

ROGER A. LADD is Assistant Professor of English at University of North Carolina at Pembroke, USA.