Political Economy and the Novel

A Literary History of "Homo Economicus"
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-3-319-94324-4
Verlag: Springer International Publishing

Buch, Englisch, 283 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 498 g

Reihe: Palgrave Studies in Literature, Culture and Economics

Political Economy and the Novel: A Literary History of ‘Homo Economicus’ provides a transhistorical account of homo economicus (economic man), demonstrating this figure’s significance to economic theory and the Anglo-American novel over a 250-year period. Beginning with Adam Smith’s seminal texts – Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations – and Henry Fielding’s A History of Tom Jones, this book combines the methodologies of new historicism and new economic criticism to investigate the evolution of the homo economicus model as it traverses through Ricardian economics and Jane Austen’s Sanditon; J. S. Mill and Charles Dickens’ engagement with mid-Victorian dualities; Keynesianism and Mrs Dalloway’s exploration of post-war consumer impulses; the a/moralistic discourses of Friedrich von Hayek, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; and finally the virtual crises of the twenty-first century financial market and Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. Through its sustained comparative analysis of literary and economic discourses, this book transforms our understanding of the genre of the novel and offers critical new understandings of literary value, cultural capital and the moral foundations of political economy.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Comyn, Sarah

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Wirtschaftspolitik, politische Ökonomie
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturtheorie: Poetik und Literaturästhetik
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Regierungspolitik Wirtschafts- und Finanzpolitik
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction Value and Representation The Character of Homo Economicus The Empathic Imagination The Narrative of Homo Economicus
2. Chapter Two: The Contested Birth of Homo Economicus The Crisis of Value and the Literary Discourse The Critical Enclosure of the Text The Division of Labour and Speculative Rhetoric Self-improvement and the Impartial Spectator
3. Chapter Three: The Speculative World of Sandition The Text and the Textual Place Imagined Economies, Imagined Disorders Ricardo's Theory of Rent and Modern Sandition The Comparative Value of Austen and Ricardo
4. Chapter Four: A Marginal Life The Optative Mood: Residues of a Past Life A Parvenu Civilisation The Spectral Presence of Homo Economicus
5. Chapter Five: The Compulsion to Consume The Specificity of the General Historians of Genre Fragments of Empire The (In)consumable and Inconsolable
6. Chapter Six: The Neoliberal Ideologue The Political Backdrop to an Economic Revolution Moral Equilibrium Contemporary Randian Impulses
7. Chapter Seven: The Asymmetric Prostate The Ascent of Information Technology Zeptoseconds and Reading Economic Data Value and Authenticity
8. Coda

Über Autor(innen)

Sarah Comyn is Postdoctoral Fellow on the ERC-funded project SouthHem at University College Dublin, Ireland.