Title: Of bondage : debt, property, and personhood in early modern England /
Authors: Bailey, Amanda, 1966-
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press,
Year: 2013
Subjects: Debt in literature.; Economics and literature Great Britain History.; Debt Great Britain History.; Property Great Britain History.; English drama History and criticism
Abstract: "The late sixteenth-century penal debt bond, which allowed an unsatisfied creditor to seize the body of his debtor, set in motion a series of precedents that would shape the legal, philosophical, and moral issue of property-in-person in England and America for centuries. Focusing on this historical juncture at which debt litigation was not merely an aspect of society but seemed to engulf it completely, Of bondage examines a culture that understood money and the body of the borrower as comparable forms of property that impinged on one another at the moment of default"--Jacket, p. [2].
Contents: Introduction: Bound Bodies and the Theater of Debt -- Chapter 1. Timon of Athens, Forms of Payback, and the Genre of Debt -- Chapter 2. Shylock and the Slaves: Owing and Owning in The Merchant of Venice -- Chapter 3. Michaelmas Term and the Problem of Satisfaction -- Chapter 4. Freedom, Bondage, and Redemption in The Custom of the Country -- Chapter 5. Prison Prose, the Pit, and the End of Tricks -- Epilogue: The Debtor and the Slave.