CALL FOR PAPERS: please forward merrily away, and forgive cross-postings The London Merchant: Intersections between the Gild Class and Middle English Literature (1 session) Special Session of the 34th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, May 6-9 1999 How did the concerns of the gild class influence late medieval writers? Did those writers have any effect on the gild system? In the past, papers on the complex interactions between the gilds and Middle English literature have tended to be grouped by literary genre or to appear as a tangential interest to urban historians. This session aims to bring together those isolated papers in panels on cycle drama, Chaucer, and the like, with the intention of bringing literary scholars and historians of the gild class into contact with each other. This session hopes to bring together papers on late medieval English drama and poetry, within the specific context of the urban history of the gilds and bourgeois. It solicits papers approaching this and related topics from the directions and with the methodologies of both literary and historical studies. Interested scholars are invited to submit abstracts of papers on this and related topics to the session organizer: Roger A. Ladd University of Wisconsin Dept. of English, Helen C. White Hall 600 North Park Street Madison, Wisconsin 53706 EMAIL: [log in to unmask] ***note that this is not the email address listed in the printed Call For Papers*** Abstract with Abstract Cover Sheet must be received by 15 September 1998, and should meet Medieval Institute requirements regarding new material and a 20-minute reading time. Abstracts should be not exceed 500 words in length, and should clearly indicate thesis, methodology and conclusions.