Political Economy and the Novel

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xii

   PDF

2. Introduction

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 1-27

3. The Contested Birth of Homo Economicus

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 29-61

4. The Speculative World of Sanditon

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 63-92

5. A Marginal Life in Great Expectations

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 93-132

6. Woolf, Keynes, and the Compulsion to Consume

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 133-172

7. The Neoliberal Ideologue

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 173-208

8. The Asymmetric Prostate: Symptoms of a Failed Technocrat in Cosmopolis

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 209-247

9. Coda

   • Sarah Comyn

   Pages 249-254

10. Back Matter

    Pages 255-283

    PDF

Political Economy and the Novel: A Literary History of ‘Homo Economicus’ provides a transhistorical account of homo economicus (economic man), demonstrating this figure’s significance to economic theory and the Anglo-American novel over a 250-year period. Beginning with Adam Smith’s seminal texts – Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations – and Henry Fielding’s A History of Tom Jones, this book combines the methodologies of new historicism and new economic criticism to investigate the evolution of the homo economicus model as it traverses through Ricardian economics and Jane Austen’s Sanditon; J. S. Mill and Charles Dickens’ engagement with mid-Victorian dualities; Keynesianism and Mrs Dalloway’s exploration of post-war consumer impulses; the a/moralistic discourses of Friedrich von Hayek, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; and finally the virtual crises of the twenty-first century financial market and DonDeLillo’s Cosmopolis. Through its sustained comparative analysis of literary and economic discourses, this book transforms our understanding of the genre of the novel and offers critical new understandings of literary value, cultural capital and the moral foundations of political economy.

• political economic writings
• literary networks
• homo economicus
• American novels
• American literature
• novel theory
• genre theory
• John Maynard Keynes
• economics in novels
• Adam Smith
• The Theory of Moral Sentiments
• The Wealth of Nations
• Henry Fielding
• A History of Tom Jones: a foundling
• Ricardian economics
• Jane Austen Sandition
• J.S. Mill
• Charles Dickens
• Don DeLillo
• Ayn Rand

“Political Economy and the Novel: A Literary History of ‘Homo Economicus’ offers an engaging, well-researched, and original look at the reciprocal relationship between economic theory and imaginative literature, beginning with Adam Smith and Tom Jones in the 18th-century and ending with cryptocurrencies in the 21^st century. Sarah Comyn showcases the impressive breadth and scope of economic thinking over a range of historical periods and across national borders, and offers exciting new ways of thinking about liberal individualism, character, and the novel. ” (Lana Dalley, Professor of English, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics, CSU Fullerton, USA)

• University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

  Sarah Comyn

Sarah Comyn is Postdoctoral Fellow on the ERC-funded project SouthHem at University College Dublin, Ireland.

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