This collection explores the myriad ways in which economics and literature are mutually illuminating. Several essays employ economic principles and paradigms to offer readings of literary and theoretical texts. These both extend current trends in literary scholarship towards historically informed methods, and interrogate those methods by exposing the material conditions under which texts are produced. Other essays present work by economists schooled in feminist, literary and cultural theory, who suggest alternatives to the constraining models that dominate neoclassicalism. The volume thus...

The Question of the Gift is the first collection of new interdisciplinary essays on the gift. Bringing together scholars from a variety of fields, including anthropology, literary criticism, economics, philosophy and classics, it provides new paradigms and poses new questions concerning the theory and practice of gift exchange.
In addressing these questions, contributors not only challenge the conventions of their fields, but also combine ideas and methods from both the social sciences and humanities to forge innovative ways of confronting this universal phenomenon.