Genres of the credit economy : mediating value in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain / Mary Poovey.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Poovey, Mary.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Finance--Great Britain--History.

Finance.

Consumer credit--Great Britain--History.

Consumer credit.

Money in literature.

Money--Social aspects--Great Britain.

Money.

Economics and literature--Great Britain--History.

Economics and literature.

Literary form--History.

Literary form.

English literature--History and criticism.

English literature.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (523 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2008.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

How did banking, borrowing, investing, and even losing money-in other words, participating in the modern financial system-come to seem likeroutine activities of everydaylife? Genres of the Credit Economy addressesthis question by examining the history of financial instruments and representations of finance in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. Chronicling the process by which some of our most important conceptual categories were naturalized, Mary Poovey explores complex relationships among forms of writing that are not usually viewed together, from bills of exchange and bank checks, to realist novels and Romantic poems, to economic theory and financial journalism. Taking up all early forms of financial and monetarywriting, Poovey argues that these genres mediated for early modern Britons the operations of a market system organized around credit and debt. By arguing that genre is a critical tool for historical and theoretical analysis and an agent in the events that formed the modern world, Poovey offers a new way to appreciate the character of the credit economy and demonstrates the contribution historians and literary scholars can make to understanding its operations. Much more than an exploration of writing on and around money, Genres of the Credit Economy offers startling insights about the evolution of disciplines and the separation of factual and fictional genres.

Contents:

Frontmatter

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

INTRODUCTION

PREAMBLE. Mediating Genres

CHAPTER ONE. Mediating Value

CHAPTER TWO. Generic Differentiation and the Naturalization of Money

INTERCHAPTER ONE. "The Paper Age"

CHAPTER THREE. Politicizing Paper Money

CHAPTER FOUR. Professional Political Economy and Its Popularizers

CHAPTER FIVE. Delimiting Literature,Defining Literary Value

INTERCHAPTER. TWO Textual Interpretation and Historical Description

CHAPTER SIX. Literary Appropriations

CODA

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9786611966232

9781281966230

1281966231

9780226675213

0226675211

OCLC:

309868528