Real money and romanticism
By: Matthew Rowlinson.
Series: Cambridge studies in romanticism -- 85
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2010
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 249
ISBN-13: 9780521193795
Subjects: English poetry -- 19th century -- History and criticism; Romanticism -- Great Britain; Money in literature; Economics in literature
Description: "Real Money and Romanticism interprets poetry and fiction by Sir Walter Scott, John Keats, and Charles Dickens in the context of changes in the British monetary system and in the broader economy during the early nineteenth century. In this period modern systems of paper money and intellectual property became established; Matthew Rowlinson describes the consequent changes in relations between writers and publishers and shows how a new conception of material artifacts as the bearers of abstract value shaped Romantic conceptions of character, material culture, and labor. A fresh and radically different contribution to the growing field of inquiry into the 'economics' of literature, this is an ingenious and challenging reading of Romantic discourse from the point of view of monetary theory and history"--
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and index.
Table of contents: title: Machine generated contents note: Introduction: real money; 1. 'The Scotch hate gold': British identity and paper money; 2. Curiosities and the money form in the Waverley novels; Notes on the text of the Waverley novels; 3. Keats in the hidden abode of production; 4. Reading capital with Little Nell; 5. 'To exist in a kind of allegory'; Appendix: copyright and authorial labor in eighteenth-century Britain.