Idols of the Marketplace: Idolatry and Commodity Fetishism in English Literature, 1580-1680 (Early Modern Cultural Studies)

305 Pages·2001·4.44 MB·English

by  David Hawkes

IDOLS OF THE
MARKETPLACE
IDOLATRY AND COMMODITY FETISHISM IN
ENGLISH LITERATURE, 1580 – 1680
David Hawkes
Idols of the Marketplace
I d o l a t r y a n d
C o m m o d i t y F e t i s h i s m
i n E n g l i s h L i t e r a t u r e ,
1 5 8 0 – 1 6 8 0
David Hawkes
IDOLSOFTHEMARKETPLACE
Copyright © David Hawkes, 2001.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the
case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
First published 2001 by
PALGRAVE™
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Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, England RG21 6XS.
Companies and representatives throughout the world.
PALGRAVE™ is the new global publishing imprint of St. Martin’s
Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers
Ltd. (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd.).
ISBN 0–312–24007–4
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Hawkes, David, 1964-
Idols of the marketplace : idolatry and commodity fetishism in
English literature, 1580–1680/ David Hawkes.
p. cm.—(Early Modern Cultural Series)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–312–24007–4
1. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and
criticism. 2. Idolatry in literature. 3. Christianity and literature—
Great Britain—History—17th century. 4. Christianity and
literature—Great Britain—History—16th century. 5. Economics
and literature—Great Britain—History—17th century.
6. Economics and literature—Great Britain—History—16th century.
7. Protestantism and literature—History. 8. Consumption
(Economics) in literature. 9. Materialism in literature.
10. Fetishism in literature. I. Title. II. Series.
PR438.I36 H39 2001
820.9’38291218—dc21
2001021548
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Design by Letra Libre, Inc.
First edition: October 2001
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
To my parents
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C o n t e n t s
Series Editor’s Foreword vii
Preface ix
Introduction 3
Chapter One Idolatry and Political Economy 27
Chapter Two Commodity Fetishism and Theology 49
Chapter Three Idolatry and Commodity Fetishism
in the Antitheatrical Controversy 77
Chapter Four Sodomy,Usury,and the Narrative
of Shakespeare’s Sonnets 95
Chapter Five Typology and Objectification
in George Herbert’s The Temple 115
Chapter Six Alchemical and Financial Value
in the Poetry of John Donne 143
Chapter Seven The Politics of Character
in Milton’s Divorce Tracts 169
Chapter Eight Thomas Traherne:
A Critique of Political Economy 191
Chapter Nine John Bunyan’s One-Dimensional Man 213
Notes 231
Index 289
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S e r i e s E d i t o r ’ s
F o r e w o r d
O
nce there was a time when each field of knowledge in the liberal
arts had its own mode of inquiry. A historian’s labors were governed
by an entirely different set of rules than those of the anthropologist or
the literary critic. But this is less true now than it has ever been. This
new series begins with the assumption that, as we enter the twenty-
first century, literary criticism, literary theory, historiography, and cul-
tural studies have become so interwoven that we can now think of
them as an eclectic and only loosely unified (but still recognizable) ap-
proach to formerly distinct fields of inquiry such as literature, society,
history, and culture. This series furthermore presumes that the early
modern period was witness to an incipient process of transculturation
through exploration, mercantilism, colonization, and migration that
set into motion a process of globalization that is still with us today.
The purpose of this series is to bring together this eclectic approach,
which freely and unapologetically crosses disciplinary, theoretical, and
political boundaries, with early modern texts and artifacts that bear
the traces of transculturation and globalization.
This process can be studied on a large as well as on a small scale,
and this new series is dedicated to both. It is just as concerned with
the analyses of colonial encounters and native representations of
those encounters as it is with representations of the other in Shake-
speare, the cultural impact of the presence of strangers/foreigners in
London, or the consequences of farmers’ migration to that same city.
This series is as interested in documenting cultural exchanges be-
tween British, Portuguese, Spanish, or Dutch colonizers and native
peoples as it is in telling the stories of returning English soldiers who
served in foreign armies on the continent of Europe in the late six-
teenth century.
Positing a strong connection between economic formations and
shifts in English cultural life, David Hawkes’s Idols of the Marketplace:
Idolatry and Commodity Fetishism in English Literature, 1580–1680
viii IDOLS OF THE MARKETPLACE
explores the responses of a number of late-sixteenth and seventeenth-
century writers to the philosophical and theological implications of
the nascent market economy. The authors Hawkes treats here ap-
proach the phenomenon of the market economy from various angles,
but all are deeply troubled by the market’s penchant for elevating an
object’s exchange-value over its use-value, resulting in an ethically
unacceptable fetishization of commodities. This fundamentally Aris-
totelian viewpoint is supplemented by the religious conviction that
the market economy trespasses on the Biblical dictates against idoliz-
ing “the works of men’s hands.” Idols of the Marketplace painstak-
ingly examines the presence of both the religious and the classical
objection to the market place in the writings of William Shakespeare,
George Herbert, John Donne, Thomas Traherne, John Milton, and
John Bunyan. What emerges is a rich tapestry of connections that
links charges of idolatry and commodity fetishism to a wide range of
issues such as anti-theatricalism, divorce, sodomy and usury, typology
and carnality, alchemy and capital, all of which reveal important stress
points in early modern English culture. Hawkes argues forcefully that
the success of the market “produces a carnal consciousness which ul-
timately causes the death of the human soul.”
Ivo Kamps
P r e f a c e
M
any of the ideas in this book first occurred to me in the late
1980s, while I was a graduate student at Columbia University. The
guidance I received there from mentors such as Jean Howard and
Victoria Silver was inspirational and remains incalculably influential
on my work. The privilege of studying under teachers like John
Archer, David Kastan, Edward Said, and Jim Shapiro is one for which
I shall always be grateful. My colleagues in the English department at
Lehigh University have been remarkably good-humored over the
years, and it is hard to imagine my endeavors bearing any fruit with-
out the affable ambience of Drown Hall. The intellectual comrade-
ship of Scott Gordon and Barbara Traister has been especially
valuable to me, Barry Kroll is a hugely supportive head of depart-
ment, and nothing at all would get done without Carol Laub, Viv
Steele, and Donna Warmkessel. In the fall of 1999 I had the won-
derful and frightening experience of teaching a faculty seminar in the
Philosophy Department, where the cogent criticisms of Gordon
Bearn, Steve Goldman, Alex Levine, Ralph Lindgren, and their col-
leagues roughly licked many of my arguments into shape. I owe Jim
Holstun special gratitude for his meticulous and brilliant critique of
this book. Kristi Long and Ivo Kamps are helpful and perceptive ed-
itors, and it has been a refreshing pleasure to work with them. Ear-
lier versions of chapters 3, 4, and 9 appear respectively in Studies in
English Literature 39 no.2 (spring 1999), Renaissance Studies 14
no.3 (fall 2000), reproduced by permission of Oxford University
Press, and The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation41 no.1
(spring 2000), reproduced by permission.