D. Vance Smith, "Merchants in the Margin."

Vance Smith, D. "Merchants in the Margin: Writing and the National Domestic of Piers Plowman." Arts of Possession: The Middle English Household Imaginary (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003).

Vance Smith's chapter considers the role of economic "imaginary" and merchants in The Vision of Piers the Plowman. Vance Smith argues that the apology added to Passus V represents a larger concern of economics, money, and merchants in the text. Specifically, Vance Smith argues that the role of economic surplus, that which is not needed to sustain the household, creates anxiety over the management of profit. Thus, the debate between Lady Mede and Conscience is also a discussion of how to manage surplus and, despite Mede's statement that the exchange of mede is not trade, merchants. Rather than a solely negative approach, however, Vance Smith suggests that the text is at times supportive of merchants and that, in the long run, the economy of salvation is one that provides merchants a methodology to manage surplus. Rather than suggesting that this is a neatly tied up issue in the text, however, Vance Smith reads the plowing of the half acre and tearing of the pardon as attempts to ameliorate the merchant that ultimately fail. Arguing that the half acre ultimately represents mercantile interests by pulling in Aristotelian perceptions of the oikos, Vance Smith comes to argue that exchange, as with many other near "solutions" in Piers Plowman, ultimately fails and places the reader back at square one. 

While I find Vance Smith's reading of economic thought and history intriguing and very useful, this chapter ultimately balances on whether or not one is willing to consider a positive role of merchants in Piers Plowman. Vance Smith's arguments in that regard are interesting and very much worth considering, but I do not find myself ultimately convinced. Despite my hesitation, however, Vance Smith's scholarship is very elucidating. Edward III's relationship with merchants, for example, is an intriguing section that adds complexity to my other readings on mercantile history. Furthermore, Vance Smith certainly demonstrates his excellent handle on Aristotelian economic thought and how it interacts with the economic history of the fourteenth century. I may not be persuaded by the main thesis, but the data presented throughout this chapter is nonetheless valuable.