Literature and Economics

Studies in Spontaneous Order

Edited by Paul A. Cantor and Stephen Cox

This collection of literary studies takes a new look at such classic authors as Cervantes, Shelley, Ben Jonson, Whitman, Conrad, Cather, and Thomas Mann, as well as including a contribution on the Nigerian novelist Ben Okri.

Two conceptions of economics and literature dominate the academic field of literary theory and literary criticism: the Marxist theory that Marxian economics and class theory are fundamental to understanding literature, and the equally influential view that economics has little to say about the content of literary works.

The contributors to this volume take a radically different position, believing that economic theory sheds considerable light on matters of literary form and content, yet rejecting both Marxian economic theory and Marxian hostility to capitalism as theoretically inadequate and generally unilluminating. It is ironic that in economics, sociology, social anthropology, and other disciplines, Marxism has been discarded because of its fundamental errors, whereas in literary studies it is still a major voice—and frequently the only voice asserting the importance of economics for literature.

Marxist literary theory has only deepened what was originally an aristocratic contempt for and distrust of market principles and practices, but the essays in this book illuminate the way in which literary works can illuminate the benefits of commercialism and capitalism.

Paul Cantor is Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English at the University of Virginia. He served on the National Council for the Humanities from 1992 to 1999. His articles have appeared in South Atlantic Quarterly, The Public Interest, Commonweal, Studies in the Novel, Reason, and Interpretation.

Steven Cox is Professor of Literature and Director of the Humanities Program at the University of California, San Diego. He is editor of Liberty magazine. His articles have appeared in many journals such as Argo, American Literary History, Blake, Criticism, Eighteenth-Century Studies, Essays in Literature, and Raritan.