This volume brings together essays on the relations between fiction and the economy, all established or emergent scholars from different fields of expertise. The essays range widely in their respective foci, extending beyond purely literary studies to encompass history, the history of language, studies in the visual arts, and philosophy.

This study of models of action seeks to respond to the loss of faith in political action that seems to predominate in Western societies, to the sense that there is nothing we can do to change the course of events, or that political action is ultimately useless, without effect in a world governed by independent political and economic laws. Its topic is the tension between the theme of the impossibility of acting, a question since Hamlet, and the impression that many events involving human agency do indeed take place. The author deals with both philosophical and dramatic texts in...