The Economy of Literature

Download or read book The Economy of Literature written by Marc Shell and published by JHU Press. This book was released on 1993-09 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did coinage, tyranny, and philosophy develop in the same time and place? Marc Shell explores how both money and language give "worth" by providing a medium of exchange, how the development of money led to a revolution in philosophical thought and language, and how words transform mere commodities into symbols at once aesthetic and practical. Offering carefully documented interpretations of texts from Heraclitus, Herodotus, Sophocles, Plato, Aristotle, Rousseau, and Ruskin, Shell demonstrates the kinship between literary and economic theory and production, introduces new methods of analyzing texts, and shows how literary and philosophical fictions can help us understand the world in which we live.