Del 21 i serien Cambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought

Writing and the Rise of Finance

Capital Satires of the Early Eighteenth Century

Häftad, Engelska, 2004

AvColin Nicholson,Howard Erskine-Hill,John J. Richetti

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The early eighteenth century saw a far-reaching financial revolution in England, whose impact on the literature of the period has hitherto been relatively unexplored. In this original study, Colin Nicholson reads familiar texts such as Gulliver's Travels, The Beggar's Opera and The Dunciad as 'capital satires', responding to the social and political effects of the installation of capitalist financial institutions in London. The founding of the Bank of England and the inauguration of the National Debt permanently altered the political economy of England: the South Sea Bubble disaster of 1721 educated a political generation into the money markets. While they invested in stocks and shares, Swift, Pope and Gay conducted a campaign against the civic effects of these new financial institutions. Conflict between these writers' inherited discourse of civic humanism and the transformations being undergone by their own society, is shown to have had a profound effect on a number of key literary texts.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2004-08-05
Mått150 x 229 x 17 mm
Vikt362 g
FormatHäftad
SpråkEngelska
SerieCambridge Studies in Eighteenth-Century English Literature and Thought
Antal sidor240
FörlagCambridge University Press
ISBN9780521604482

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Preface; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. A culture of commodities: 'Trivial Things' in The Rape of the Lock; 2. Cultivating the bubble: some investing contemporaries; 3. 'Some Very Bad Effects': The strange case of Gulliver's Travels; 4. 'Bilk'd of Virtue': The Beggar's Opera; 5. 'Abusing the City's Best Good Men': Pope's poetry of the 1730s; 6. 'Illusion on the town': Figuring out credit in The Dunciad; Bibliography; Index.

"...this most original study centers on the effects that the financial revolution in English society...had on some of the major writers of the period...The author's approach to these works from this specialized, political-economical point of view is consistent, resourceful, elucidating, and convincing; Nicolson...has presented a very valuable argument for viewing these 18th-century writers 'in terms of a developing political economy that was permanently changing their world as they wrote'...Highly recommended to those interested in 18th-century history and literature." R. G. Brown