The 'Invisible Hand' and British Fiction, 1818-1860 [electronic resource] : Adam Smith, Political Economy, and the Genre of Realism /
Courtemanche, E.author.
The 'invisible hand', Adam Smith's metaphor for the morality of capitalism, is explored in this text as being far more subtle and intricate than is usually understood, with many British realist fiction writers (Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot) having absorbed his model of ironic causality in complex societies and turned it to their own purposes.
Description based upon print version of record.
Cover; Series page; Title page; Copyright; Dedication; Contents; Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction: Capitalist Moral Philosophy, Narrative Technology, and the Boundaries of the Nation-State; Part I Reading Adam Smith; 1 Imaginary Vantage Points: The Invisible Hand and the Rise of Political Economy; 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; 3 Providential Endings: Martineau, Dickens, and the Didactic Task of Political Economy
4 Ripple Effects and the Fog of War in Vanity Fair5 Inappropriate Sympathies in Gaskell and Eliot; Conclusion: Realist Capitalism, Gothic Capitalism; Notes; Bibliography; Index
Includes bibliographical references and index.
The 'invisible hand', Adam Smith's metaphor for the morality of capitalism, is explored in this text as being far more subtle and intricate than is usually understood, with many British realist fiction writers (Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot) having absorbed his model of ironic causality in complex societies and turned it to their own purposes.
Smith, Adam, 1723-1790
British literature.
Literature-Philosophy.
Culture-Study and teaching.
Literature, Modern-19th century.
Fiction.
Economic theory.
British and Irish Literature.
Literary Theory.
Cultural Theory.
Nineteenth-Century Literature.
Fiction.
Economic Theory/Quantitative Economics/Mathematical Methods.