What is the value of literature? In this important new work, Thomas Docherty charts a new economic history of literary culture and its institutions in the modern age. From the literary patronage of the early modern period, through the colonial exploitation of the 18th and 19th centuries to the institutionalisation of "literature" in the neoliberal university of the 21st century, Literature and Capital explores the changing ways in which literary culture has both resisted and become complicit with exploitative economic notions of value. Drawing on the work of economic and political thinkers such as Thomas Piketty, Naomi Klein, Edward Said and Raymond Williams, the book includes readings of work by a wide range of canonical authors from Shakespeare, Donne and Swift to Tolstoy, Woolf and Ishiguro.
What is the value of literature? In this important new work, Thomas Docherty charts a new economic history of literary culture and its institutions in the modern age. From the literary patronage of the early modern period, through the colonial exploitation of the 18th and 19th centuries to the institutionalisation of "literature" in the neoliberal university of the 21st century, Literature and Capital explores the changing ways in which literary culture has both resisted and become complicit with exploitative economic notions of value. Drawing on the work of economic and political thinkers such as Thomas Piketty, Naomi Klein, Edward Said and Raymond Williams, the book includes readings of work by a wide range of canonical authors from Shakespeare, Donne and Swift to Tolstoy, Woolf and Ishiguro.
Preface
Part 1: Land and Letters
1. Capital and the Embrace of Letters
2. On the Credibility of Writing: Material Promise
3. The Career of English
Part 2: Culture and Capital
4. Governing the Tongue
5. Inequality, Management and the Hatred of Literature
6. Cultural Capital and the Shameful University
Part 3: Institutional and Human Capital
7. The Privatization of All Interests
8. Radical Geography
Index
A landmark new economic history of literary culture and its institutions from the early modern period, through the age of imperialism, to 21st-century neoliberalism.
Thomas Docherty is Professor of English at the University of Warwick, UK. He has published on most areas of English and comparative literature from the Renaissance to the present day. His previous books include After Theory (1996), The English Question (2008) and For the University (Bloomsbury, 2011).
An impassioned critique of financial capitalism and its
relationship to the institution of literature ... [The] breadth in
literary selection no doubt reveals Docherty’s mastery over this
canonical corpus ... Literature and Capital is written in a clear,
accessible language.
*Marx & Philosophy Review of Books*
A radical reappraisal of the ways in which literary study
challenges and is challenged by the ascent of money. This is a work
of panoptic precision, in which intellectual passion is matched by
sound scholarly scruple.
*Declan Kiberd, Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish
Studies, University of Notre Dame, USA*
Literature and Capital is a wonderful wide-ranging and erudite
study. At once tolerant and angry, and written with great
perception and persuasion, it details with a powerful intelligence
the relationships between literature, land, education, enquiry and
the various cultural organisations of capital. Thomas Docherty is a
critical provocateur for our times and this book is the kind of
urgent and committed scholarship that the present requires.
*Stuart Murray, Professor of Contemporary Literatures and Film,
University of Leeds, UK*
An impassioned and cogent analysis of the entwining of literature
and capital that continually impresses on account of its historical
depth and critical vigilance. Above all, a compelling argument for
why a radical study of literature is needed to engage with the
multiple challenges of our times.
*Michael Rossington, Professor of Romantic Literature, Newcastle
University, UK*
This is a very important book in the backdrop of our contemporary
thinking around literature, marketplace, survival, funds and
capital. Through a deeply meshed intervention involving human,
cultural, institutional and financial capital, Docherty has pulled
off a stunning achievement where credit and literary
creditilization and credibility have come into a formidable
play.
*Ranjan Ghosh, University of North Bengal, India*
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