The 'Invisible Hand' and British Fiction, 1818-1860

The 'invisible hand', Adam Smith's metaphor for the morality of capitalism, is explored in this text as being far more subtle and intricate than is usually understood, with many British realist fiction writers (Austen, Dickens, Gaskell, Eliot) having absorbed his model of ironic causality in complex societies and turned it to their own purposes.

'This book makes a strong case for the humanities through its interdisciplinary study of political economy in the nineteenth century...Courtemanche's theoretical framework is elegant and compelling. With the aid of Smith's metaphor, she contraposes a worm's-eye view with a bird's-eye view, and then uses this contraposed pair to represent the worker and the landowner, the economist and the literary philosopher, the literary character and the narrator.' - Leeann Hunter, New Books on Literature 19

Autorentext
ELEANOR COURTEMANCHE Assistant Professor of English at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. She has also taught at Colby College, Macalester College, Claremont McKenna College, and Carleton College. In addition to Victorian studies, her research interests include German fiction, narrative theory, and the intersection between industry and aesthetics.

Inhalt
Acknowledgements Introduction: Capitalist Moral Philosophy, Narrative Technology, and the Bounded Nation-State PART I: READING ADAM SMITH Imaginary Vantage Points: The Invisible Hand and the Rise of Political Economy PART II: EARLY NINETEENTH-CENTURY NOVELS AND INVISIBLE HAND SOCIAL THEORY Omniscient Narrators and the Return of the Gothic in Northanger Abbey and Bleak House Providential Endings: Martineau, Dickens, and the Didactic Task of Political Economy Ripple Effects and the Fog of War in Vanity Fair Inappropriate Sympathies in Gaskell and Eliot Conclusion: Realist Capitalism, Gothic Capitalism Bibliography Index