Money, language, and thought
Subtitle: literary and philosophic economies from the medieval to the modern era
By: Marc Shell.
Edition: Softshell Books ed.
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Published: 1993
Place of publication: Baltimore
Language: eng
Number of pages: 245
Subjects: Economics in literature.; Language and languages -- Philosophy.; Money -- Philosophy.
Description: Marc Shell explores the interactions between linguistic and economic production as they inform discourse from Chretien de Troyes to Heidegger. Close readings of works such as the medieval grail legends, The Merchant of Venice, Goethe's Faust, and Poe's "The Gold Bug" reveal how discourse has responded to the dissociation of symbol from thing characteristic of money, and how the development of increasingly symbolic currencies has involved changes in the meaning of meaning.

Pursuing his investigations into the modern era, Shell points out significant internalization of economic form in Kant, Hegel, and Heidegger. He demonstrates how literature and philosophy have been driven to account self-critically for a "money of the mind" that pervades all discourse, and concludes with a discomforting thesis about the cultural and political limits of literature and philosophy.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
"Originally published by the University of California Press in 1982"--T.p. verso.