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.

Autorentext

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

Klappentext

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.

Inhalt

1. IntroductionValue and RepresentationThe Character of Homo EconomicusThe Empathic ImaginationThe Narrative of Homo Economicus
2. Chapter Two: The Contested Birth of Homo EconomicusThe Crisis of Value and the Literary DiscourseThe Critical Enclosure of the TextThe Division of Labour and Speculative RhetoricSelf-improvement and the Impartial Spectator
3. Chapter Three: The Speculative World of SanditionThe Text and the Textual PlaceImagined Economies, Imagined DisordersRicardo's Theory of Rent and Modern SanditionThe Comparative Value of Austen and Ricardo
4. Chapter Four: A Marginal LifeThe Optative Mood: Residues of a Past LifeA Parvenu CivilisationThe Spectral Presence of Homo Economicus
5. Chapter Five: The Compulsion to ConsumeThe Specificity of the GeneralHistorians of GenreFragments of EmpireThe (In)consumable and Inconsolable
6. Chapter Six: The Neoliberal IdeologueThe Political Backdrop to an Economic RevolutionMoral EquilibriumContemporary Randian Impulses
7. Chapter Seven: The Asymmetric ProstateThe Ascent of Information TechnologyZeptoseconds and Reading Economic DataValue and Authenticity
8. Coda