Love and Money: A Literary History of Desires PDF
Preview Love and Money: A Literary History of Desires
LOVE AND MONEY When people speak about love and money, they are usually referring to a con- flict:lovedistortedbythedesireformoney.Suchstatementsimplythatlovehasa distinct form before economics interferes, but this book aims to show that such a view simplifies what is going on, because people have always been deeply shaped by everything in the social order, including economics. So when people say that money is distorting love, what they are really saying is that the current relation- ship of love and economics is different from an earlier relationship. This book seeks then to demonstrate the intertwining of the discourses of love and money over a long history by focusing on moments when parallel conceptions appear in economic theories and love stories. The two discourses intersect because both seek to define qualities and behaviors of human beingsthat are most valuable and hence most desirable. Similar descriptions of valuable behaviors appear at roughly the same time in economic theories of how to acquire wealth and literary stories of how to find ideal lovers. By tracking mutual expressions of desire, value, and acquisition in economics and love stories, this book argues for the ubiquity of the intertwining of these discourses while exploring shifts in conceptions of value. It focuses on four eras wheneconomicandromanticconceptionsofwhatismostdesirablewereactively changing in English discourses: the early modern 17th century, the Victorian 19th, the modernist 20th, and the postmodern present. Michael Tratner received a Ph.D. in English from the University of California, Berkeley, and is currently the Mary E. Garrett Alumnae Professor of English at Bryn Mawr College. He has published three books: Modernism and Mass Politics: Joyce, Woolf, Eliot, Yeats; Deficits, Desires: Economics and Sexuality in Twentieth- Century Literature; and Crowd Scenes: Movies and Mass Politics. LOVE AND MONEY A Literary History of Desires Michael Tratner Firstpublished2021 byRoutledge 52VanderbiltAvenue,NewYork,NY10017 andbyRoutledge 2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness ©2021Taylor&Francis TherightofMichaelTratnertobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhasbeen assertedbytheminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright, DesignsandPatentsAct1988. Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe publishers. Trademarknotice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintent toinfringe. LibraryofCongressCataloging-in-PublicationData Acatalogrecordforthistitlehasbeenrequested ISBN:978-0-367-50494-6(hbk) ISBN:978-0-367-50490-8(pbk) ISBN:978-1-003-05009-4(ebk) TypesetinBembo byTaylor&FrancisBooks CONTENTS Acknowledgements vi Permissions vii Introduction 1 1 Digesting Foreign Treasure: Early Modern Mercantilist Lovers 11 2 Disconnecting Bloodlines: Moving to Capitalist Romance 45 3 Usury in the Bedroom: Financing Desire 73 4 Leaving the Body to Become Information 110 Index 149 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This book would never have been completed without the advice of Howard Horwitz and Jamie Taylor; they commented on early versions of some parts of the book, suggesting readings I had not encountered, helping me expand my ideas. Howard also read full drafts of multiple chapters and has provided superb suggestions for revising. This project has also benefitted from ideas first put forth by students in my classes at Bryn Mawr College, where I have taught a course entitled“LoveandMoney”severaltimes.RoyScotthasturnedtheprojectintoa single image for the cover that beautifully captures the essence of the whole. I also wish to thank Michelle Salyga, my editor, and her assistant, Bryony Reece, who have provided guidance that has made the publishing process smooth and productive. My family has supported me by being a mostly willing audience so I could rehearse various versions of broad ideas. In particular, Leda Sportolari has suggested numerous perspectives on topics I was writing about and has supported the process of working on something for much too long. PERMISSIONS “To Elsie” and “A Foot-Note” by William Carlos Williams (Collected Poems Volume I 1909–1939, 2018) are reprinted here by kind permission of Carcanet Press Ltd, Manchester, UK. All Louis Zukofsky materials copyright © Musical Observations, Inc. Used by permission. “Spring and All” by William Carlos Williams, from The Collected Poems: Volume I, 1909–1939, copyright ©1938 by New Directions Publishing Corp. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Paterson by William Carlos Williams, copyright ©1946, 1948, 1949, 1951, 1958 by William Carlos Williams. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. The Cantos of Ezra Pound by Ezra Pound, from The Cantos of Ezra Pound, copyright ©1934, 1937, 1940, 1948, 1950, 1956, 1959, 1962, 1963, 1965, 1966, 1968, 1970, and 1971 by Ezra Pound. Reprinted by permission of New Direc- tions Publishing Corp. The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber. INTRODUCTION When people speak about love and money, they are usually referring to a con- flict:lovedistortedbythedesireformoney.Suchstatementsimplythatlovehasa distinct form before economics interferes, but this book aims to show that such a view simplifies what is going on, because people have always been deeply shaped from the beginnings of their lives by everything in the social order, including economics. So when people say that money is distorting love, what they are really pointing out is that the current relationship of love and economics is dif- ferent from an earlier relationship. This book seeks then to demonstrate the intertwining of the discourses of love and money over a long history by focusing on moments when parallel conceptions appear in economic theories and love stories. Such parallels may seem surprising, but there is a fairly simple explanation of why they occur: the two discourses repeatedly intersect because both involve describing or prescribing qualities and behaviors of human beings which are most valuable and hence most desirable. One economist who highlighted this inter- section as central to economics—Dennis Holme Robertson—wrote in 1956, What does the economist economize? Tis love … if we economists mind our own business, and do that business well, we can, I believe, contribute mightily to the economizing, that is to the full but thrifty utilization, of that scarce resource, Love—which we know, just as well as anybody else, to be the most precious thing in the world. (154) Robertson’s statement may seem rather unusual for an economist, but he bases it on a plausible notion of what all economic theories aim at: to identify and help people maximize what they deem most precious. Of course, most economists do
The list of books you might like
