The 'invisible hand' and British fiction, 1818-1860 : Adam Smith, political economy, and the genre of realism / by Eleanor Courtemanche.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Courtemanche, Eleanor, 1968-

Series:

Palgrave studies in nineteenth-century writing and culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Smith, Adam, 1723-1790.

English fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Economics in literature.

Capitalism in literature.

Social problems in literature.

Smith, Adam, 1723-1790--Influence.

Smith, Adam.

Capitalism and literature--Great Britain--History--19th century.

Capitalism and literature.

History.

Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xi, 251 pages ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire ; New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.

Summary:

Courtemanche (English, U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) grabs hold of an economic idea--Adam Smith's "invisible hand" metaphor--and traces its echoes and reflections in fiction. With a broad vision of the implications and ironies of the metaphor--beyond the political-economic reading--she illuminates novels by Austen, Dickens, Martineau, Thackeray, Gaskell, and Eliot. Her study is wide-ranging, thought-provoking, and clearly articulated. Annotation ©2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Contents:

Part I Reading Adam Smith

1 Imaginary Vantage Points: The Invisible Hand and the Rise of Political Economy 21

The Wealth of Nations: natural liberty, negative liberty, and the invisible hand 26

The physiocratic model: geometry and surveillance 38

The 'History of Astronomy' and the scientific imagination 44

Beauty, utility, and subjectivity in The Theory of Moral Sentiments 52

Gender, virtue, and the 'Adam Smith Problem' 57

From utility to utopia: Smith's disciples and disciplines 62

Part II Early Nineteenth-Century Novels and Invisible Hand Social Theory

2 Omniscient Narrators and the Return of the Gothic in Northanger Abbey and Bleak House 75

Free indirect discourse and the comedy of Gothic anxiety 80

Dickensian omniscience and the narrator incarnate 99

3 Providential Endings: Martineau, Dickens, and the Didactic Task of Political Economy 120

Fiction as science: Martineau's defence of realism and her gloomy excesses 128

Fiction as anti-science: the revisionary rage of Hard Times 138

4 Ripple Effects and the Fog of War in Vanity Fair 146

Models of market society as incalculably complex 148

From the bowl of rack punch to the edges of the system 155

The fog of war: individual confusion and retrospective delusion 163

5 Inappropriate Sympathies in Gaskell and Eliot 171

'The view from the place where you stand': sympathy for strangers in Mary Barton 176

Emphasis and irony in The Mill on the Floss 186.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780230290785

0230290787

OCLC:

692287882