Fiction, Famine, and the Rise of Economics in Victorian Britain and Ireland

ISBN-13: 9780521828482 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 244 str.

Gordon Bigelow; Gillian Beer

Opis

During the Irish Famine of 1845-52, novels by Dickens and Gaskell, as well as a range of commentaries on the Irish disaster, argued for a new theory of individual expression in opposition to the systemized approach to economic life that political economy proposed. These romantic views of human subjectivity eventually provided the foundation for a new theory of capitalism based on the desires of the individual consumer.

Recenzje

"Powerful." EH-NET

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Introduction; Part I. Origin Stories and Political Economy, 1740–1870: 1. History as abstraction; 2. Value as signification; Part II. Producing the Consumer: 3. Market indicators: banking and housekeeping in Bleak House; 4. Esoteric solutions: Ireland and the colonial critique of political economy; 5. Toward a social theory of wealth: three novels by Elizabeth Gaskell; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.