Description
Book SynopsisExamines the concept of value as it came to be understood in eighteenth-century England through two divergent discourses: political economy and the novel. This work shows the novel's importance in remapping English culture according to the separate spheres of public and domestic life, men's and women's concerns, money and emotion.
Trade Review“
Models of Value makes one of those reconceptualizations of a literary and cultural field that seems obvious only in retrospect; that is to say that once one thinks of the novel’s cultural functions in relation to those of political economy, it is hard to see how past discussions of the novel have managed to ignore the crisis in ‘value’ addressed in eighteenth–century concerns with money and monetary function.”—Kristina Straub, Carnegie Mellon University
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Models of Value 1
1. Representation and Exchange 15
2. Money as Sign 40
3. Defoe and the Narrative of Exchange 87
4. Fielding and Property 132
5. Burney and Debt 156
Conclusion: Austen and the Novel 185
Notes 199
Works Cited 251
Index 267
