Models of Value

James Thompson examines the concept of value as it came to be understood in eighteenth-century England through two emerging and divergent discourses: political economy and the novel. By looking at the relationship between these two developing forms - one having to do with finance, the other with romance - Thompson demonstrates how value came to have such different meaning in different realms of experience. A highly original rethinking of the origins of the English novel, "Models of Value" shows the novel's importance in remapping English culture according to the separate spheres of public and domestic life, men's and women's concerns, money and emotion. In this account, political economy and the novel clearly arise as solutions to a crisis in the notion of value.Exploring the ways in which these different genres responded to the crisis - political economy by reconceptualizing wealth as capital, and the novel by refiguring intrinsic or human worth in the form of courtship narratives - Thompson rereads several literary works, including Defoe's "Roxana", Fielding's "Tom Jones", and Burney's "Cecilia", along with influential contemporary economic texts. "Models of Value" also traces the discursive consequences of this bifurcation of value, and reveals how history and theory participate in the very novelistic and economic processes they describe. In doing so, this book bridges the opposition between the interests of Marxism and feminism, and the distinctions which, newly made in the eighteenth century, continue to inform our discourse today. An important reformulation of the literary and cultural production of the eighteenth century, "Models of Value" will attract students of the novel, political economy, and of literary history and theory.

ISBN 0822317214   Pages 280 ISBN13 9780822317210 (What's this?)   Volumes 1 Publisher Duke University Press   Weight (grammes) 463 Imprint Duke University Press   Published in North Carolina Format Paperback   Height (mm) 229 Publication date 01 Jun 1996   Width (mm) 152 Library of Congress PR858.E37T   Spine width (mm) 21 DEWEY 823.509355   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly DEWEY edition DC21

		Acknowledgments
		Introduction: Models of Value		1
1		Representation and Exchange		15
2		Money as Sign		40
3		Defoe and the Narrative of Exchange		87
4		Fielding and Property		132
5		Burney and Debt		156
		Conclusion: Austen and the Novel		185
		Notes		199
		Works Cited		251
		Index		267

OModels of Value makes one of those reconceptualizations of a literary and cultural field that seems obvious only in retrospect; that is to say that once one thinks of the novelOs cultural functions in relation to those of political economy, it is hard to see how past discussions of the novel have managed to ignore the crisis in OvalueO addressed in eighteenthETHcentury concerns with money and monetary function.ONKristina Straub, Carnegie Mellon University

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