Finance and fictionality in the early eighteenth century : accounting for Defoe / Sandra Sherman.

By:

Sherman, Sandra

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996.Description: 1 online resource (xii, 222 pages)Content type:

text

Media type:

computer

Carrier type:

online resource

ISBN:

058503012X
9780585030128

Subject(s): Genre/Form:

Additional physical formats: Print version:: Finance and fictionality in the early eighteenth century.DDC classification:

823/.5 20

LOC classification:

PR3408.E25 S54 1996eb

Other classification:

I561. 074

Online resources:

Click here to access online

Contents:

1. Credit and its discontents: the credit/fiction homology -- 2. Defoe and fictionality -- 3. Credit and honesty in The Compleat English Tradesman -- 4. Fictions of stability -- 5. Lady Credit's reprise: Roxana.

Summary: 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.

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Includes bibliographical references (pages 179-220) and index.

Print version record.

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.

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