Economies of Literature and Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

Placing 'literature' at the centre of Renaissance economic knowledge, this bookoffers a distinct intervention in the history of early modern epistemology. Thisbook is premised on the belief that early modern practices of change andexchange produced a range of epistemic shifts and crises, which, nonetheless,lacked a systematic vocabulary. These essays collectively tap into the imaginativekernel at the core of economic experience, to grasp and give expression to someof its more elusive experiential dimensions. The essays gathered here probe theearly modern interface between imaginative and mercantile knowledge, betweentechnologies of change in the field of commerce and transactions in the sphere ofcultural production, and between forms of transaction and representation. In theprocess, they go beyond the specific interrelation of economic life and literarywork to bring back into view the thresholds between economics on the one hand,and religious, legal and natural philosophical epistemologies on the other.

Auteur

Subha Mukherji is Principle Investigator of the ERC project, Crossroads of

Knowledge in Early Modern England: the Place of Literature. She teaches English

at the University of Cambridge, UK, and at Fitzwilliam College. She has published

widely on various aspects of Renaissance English literature, interdisciplinary

approaches, and literary epistemologies.

Dunstan Roberts is a Praeceptor in English at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge,

UK. He has published on various aspects of library history and the history of the

book in the Early Modern period.

Rebecca Tomlin was a Research Associate on the Crossroads of Knowledge

project and an Early Career Fellow of the London Renaissance Seminar. Currently working on a monograph based on her Birkbeck PhD thesis, she also has an

interest in early double-entry book-keeping. When not researching she works at

a City livery company.

George Oppitz-Trotman was a Research Associate on the Crossroads of

Knowledge project. He has published on diverse aspects of Early Modern culture,

particularly as they intersect with theatre.

Contenu

1. Introduction.- 2. Some Economic Aspects to Private Prayer in Shakespeare.- 3. Fake News: The Marketplace of Boccalini's Parnassian Press and the History of Criticism.- 4. Emblem Books, Gift-exchange Practices and conomia.- 5. Vexed and Insatiable: Unfeelable Feelings and the Marketplace of Early Modern Drama.- 6. Poesies for Prizes: Queen Elizabeth's Lottery, Providential Rule and 'Fair Advantages' in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice.- 7. 'Her tongue hath guilded it': Speaking Economically in Thomas Heywood's Edward IV.- 8. 'To Look on Your Incestuous Eyes': Knowledge, Matter, and Desire in Richard Brome's The Queen's Exchange and The New Academy, or the New Exchange.- 9. Mirifica commutatio: The Economy of Salvation in Reformation Theology.- 10. In vulcano veritas: Sir Hugh Platt's Alchemical Exchanges.- 11. Freedom from Debt: The Economies of The Tempest.