Finance and fictionality in the early eighteenth century: accounting for Defoe

In the early eighteenth century, the increasing dependence of society on financial credit provoked widespread anxiety. The texts of credit - stock certificates, IOUs, bills of exchange - were denominated as potential 'fictions', while the potential fictionality of other texts was measured...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Beteilige Person: Sherman, Sandra (VerfasserIn)
Format: Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:Englisch
Veröffentlicht: New York Cambridge University Press 1996
Schlagwörter:
Links:https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511582219
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511582219
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511582219
Zusammenfassung:In the early eighteenth century, the increasing dependence of society on financial credit provoked widespread anxiety. The texts of credit - stock certificates, IOUs, bills of exchange - were denominated as potential 'fictions', while the potential fictionality of other texts was measured in terms of the 'credit' they deserved. Sandra Sherman argues that in this environment finance is like fiction, employing the same tropes. She goes on to show how the work of Daniel Defoe epitomised the market's capacity to unsettle discourse, demanding and evading 'honesty' at the same time. Defoe's uvre, straddling both finance and literature, theorizes the disturbance of market discourse, elaborating strategies by which an author can remain in the market, perpetrating fiction while avoiding responsibility for doing so
Beschreibung:Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 14 Jan 2016)
Umfang:1 online resource (xii, 222 pages)
ISBN:9780511582219
DOI:10.1017/CBO9780511582219