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

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. Introduction.- 2. Chapter Two: The Contested Birth of Homo Economicus.- 3. Chapter Three: The Speculative World of Sandition.- 4. Chapter Four: A Marginal Life.- 5. Chapter Five: The Compulsion to Consume.- 6. Chapter Six: The Neoliberal Ideologue.- 7. Chapter Seven: The Asymmetric Prostate.- 8. Coda.

Über Autor(innen)

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