Culture of Usury in Renaissance England

DAVID HAWKES Professor of English at Arizona State University, USA.

• Introduction: Debt and Deconstruction 'How is the World Changed': The Emergence of Usury The Aristotelian and Biblical The Theological Critique 'Strange Metamorphosis': The Death of Hospitality Of Misers and Hogs 'Tramplers of Time': Alchemists, Goldsmiths, and Sodomites Afterword

"Hawkes' brilliant anatomy of early modern usury illuminates a keyword of the period. Revealing usury's connections to magic and witchcraft, sodomy, idolatry, unnatural birth, epicurean self-indulgence, consumer desire, and the death of hospitality, Hawkes argues that early modern people saw usury as unambiguously evil. The Culture of Usury in Renaissance England evokes a world in which making money breed was assumed to destroy the soul and the possibility for just and charitable action. Learned, impassioned, and forcefully written, Hawkes' book uses the past to query many of the assumptions that govern contemporary life. A tour de force." - Jean Howard, George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities, Columbia University and Chair of the Department of English and Comparative Literature