Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel PDF Author: Liz Bellamy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521622240
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
There has been much debate about the literary origins of the novel. Liz Bellamy argues that the evolution of the novel in eighteenth-century Britain should also be seen in the context of other cultural changes, in particular the emergence of the study of economics. Through fresh readings of a wide range of novels, Bellamy examines the novel's engagement with contemporary debates over public and private virtues and commercial and anti-commercial ethics, and shows how crucial these were to the structure and moral content of the novel as a form.

Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel

Commerce, Morality and the Eighteenth-Century Novel PDF Author: Liz Bellamy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521622240
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 232

Get Book

Book Description
There has been much debate about the literary origins of the novel. Liz Bellamy argues that the evolution of the novel in eighteenth-century Britain should also be seen in the context of other cultural changes, in particular the emergence of the study of economics. Through fresh readings of a wide range of novels, Bellamy examines the novel's engagement with contemporary debates over public and private virtues and commercial and anti-commercial ethics, and shows how crucial these were to the structure and moral content of the novel as a form.

Prostitution and Eighteenth-Century Culture

Prostitution and Eighteenth-Century Culture PDF Author: Ann Lewis
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317322878
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
The eighteenth century saw profound changes in the way prostitution was represented in literary and visual culture. This collection of essays focuses on the variety of ways that the sex trade was represented in popular culture of the time, across different art forms and highlighting contradictory interpretations.

Moral Commerce

Moral Commerce PDF Author: Julie L. Holcomb
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501706624
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 267

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Book Description
How can the simple choice of a men’s suit be a moral statement and a political act? When the suit is made of free-labor wool rather than slave-grown cotton. In Moral Commerce, Julie L. Holcomb traces the genealogy of the boycott of slave labor from its seventeenth-century Quaker origins through its late nineteenth-century decline. In their failures and in their successes, in their resilience and their persistence, antislavery consumers help us understand the possibilities and the limitations of moral commerce. Quaker antislavery rhetoric began with protests against the slave trade before expanding to include boycotts of the use and products of slave labor. For more than one hundred years, British and American abolitionists highlighted consumers’ complicity in sustaining slavery. The boycott of slave labor was the first consumer movement to transcend the boundaries of nation, gender, and race in an effort by reformers to change the conditions of production. The movement attracted a broad cross-section of abolitionists: conservative and radical, Quaker and non-Quaker, male and female, white and black. The men and women who boycotted slave labor created diverse, biracial networks that worked to reorganize the transatlantic economy on an ethical basis. Even when they acted locally, supporters embraced a global vision, mobilizing the boycott as a powerful force that could transform the marketplace. For supporters of the boycott, the abolition of slavery was a step toward a broader goal of a just and humane economy. The boycott failed to overcome the power structures that kept slave labor in place; nonetheless, the movement’s historic successes and failures have important implications for modern consumers.

Performing China

Performing China PDF Author: Chi-ming Yang
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 1421404419
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
China in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was a model of economic and political strength, viewed by many as the greatest empire in the world. While the importance of China to eighteenth-century English consumer culture is well documented, less so is its influence on English values. Through a careful study of the literature, drama, philosophy, and material culture of the period, this book articulates how Chinese culture influenced English ideas about virtue. Discourses of virtue were significantly shaped by the intensified trade with the East Indies. Chi-ming Yang focuses on key forms of virtue—heroism, sincerity, piety, moderation, sensibility, and patriotism—whose meanings and social importance developed in the changing economic climate of the period. She highlights the ways in which English understandings of Eastern values transformed these morals. The book is organized by type of performance—theatrical, ethnographic, and literary—and by performances of gender, identity fraud, and religious conversion. In her analysis of these works, Yang brings to light surprising connections between figures as disparate as Confucius and a Chinese Amazon and between cultural norms as far removed as Hindu reincarnation and London coffeehouse culture. Part of a new wave of cross-disciplinary scholarship, where Chinese studies meets the British eighteenth century, this novel work will appeal to scholars in a number of fields, including performance studies, East Asian studies, British literature, cultural history, gender studies, and postcolonial studies.

A Revolution in Commerce

A Revolution in Commerce PDF Author: Amalia D. Kessler
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300113978
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
"Kessler shows how the merchants who were associated with the court - and not just elite thinkers and royal reformers - played a key role in reconceptualizing commerce as the credit-fueled private exchange necessary to sustain the social order. Deploying this modern conception of commerce in a variety of contexts, ranging from litigation over negotiable instruments to corporatist battles for status and jurisdiction, these merchants contributed (largely inadvertently and to their ultimate regret) to the demise of corporatism as both conceptual framework and institutional practice. In so doing, they helped bring about the social and political revolution of 1789." "A Revolution in Commerce provides new insights into the rise of commercial modernity by demonstrating the remarkable role played by the law in ideological and institutional transformation."--BOOK JACKET.

Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England

Authorship, Commerce, and Gender in Early Eighteenth-Century England PDF Author: Catherine Ingrassia
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521630634
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
The contemporaneous development of speculative investment and the novel in the early eighteenth century, and women's role in both.

The Politics of Sensibility

The Politics of Sensibility PDF Author: Markman Ellis
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521604277
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 284

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Book Description
The sentimental novel has long been noted for its liberal and humanitarian interests, but also for its predilection for refined feeling, the privilege it accords emotion over reason, and its preference for the private over the public sphere. In The Politics of Sensibility, however, Markman Ellis argues that sentimental fiction also consciously participated in some of the most keenly contested public controversies of the late eighteenth century, including the emergence of anti-slavery opinion, discourse on the morality of commerce, and the movement for the reformation of prostitutes. By investigating the significance of political material in the fictional text, and by exploring the ways in which the novels themselves take part in historical disputes, Ellis shows that the sentimental novel was a political tool of considerable cultural significance.

The Social Thought of Bernard Mandeville

The Social Thought of Bernard Mandeville PDF Author: Thomas A. Horne
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 144

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Book Description


Infamous Commerce

Infamous Commerce PDF Author: Laura J. Rosenthal
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801444043
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
Laura J. Rosenthal uses literary and historical sources to explore the meaning of prostitution from the Restoration through the eighteenth century.

The Eighteenth-Century Literature Handbook

The Eighteenth-Century Literature Handbook PDF Author: Gary Day
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441163905
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Literature and Culture Handbooks are an innovative series of guides to major periods, topics and authors in British and American literature and culture. Designed to provide a comprehensive, one-stop resource for literature students, each handbook provides the essential information and guidance needed from the beginning of a course through to developing more advanced knowledge and skills. Written in clear language by leading academics, they provide an indispensable introduction to key topics, including: Introduction to authors, texts, historical and cultural contexts Guides to key critics, concepts and topics An overview of major critical approaches, changes in the canon and directions of current and future research Case studies in reading literary and critical texts Annotated bibliography (including websites), timeline, glossary of critical terms. The Eighteenth-Century Literature Handbook is an invaluable introduction to literature and culture in the eighteenth century.