Securing the Commonwealth: Debt, Speculation, and Writing in the Making of Early America
232
Securing the Commonwealth: Debt, Speculation, and Writing in the Making of Early America
232Paperback
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Overview
Some of the century's most important writers, including Cotton Mather, Benjamin Franklin, Royall Tyler, Charles Brockden Brown, and Judith Sargent Murray, believed that economic and social commonwealth—and one's commitment to that commonwealth—might be grounded in indebtedness and financial insecurity. These writers believed a cash-poor colony or nation could not only advance itself through borrowing but also gain reputability each time it successfully paid off a loan. Equally important, they believed that debt could promote communality: precarious public credit structures could exact popular commitment; intricate financial networks could bind individuals to others and to their government; and indebtedness itself could evoke sympathy for the suffering of others.
Close readings of their literary works reveal how these writers imagined that public life might be shaped by economic experience, and how they understood the public life of literature itself. Insecure times strengthened their conviction that writing could be publicly serviceable, persuading readers to invest in their government, in their fellow Americans, and in the idea of America itself.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780801889691 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Johns Hopkins University Press |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2008 |
| Pages: | 232 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d) |
| Age Range: | 18 Years |
About the Author
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Castle BuildingPart I: New World Ventures1. Crisis and Faith in the Puritan Society2. Making Much of Nothing in the ChesapeakePart II: The Price of Independence3. Benjamin Franklin's Projections4. Performing Redemption on the National StagePart II: Bonds of the New Nation5. Arthur Mervyn and the Reader's Investments6. The Medium between Calculation and FeelingEpilogue: Headwork, Literary VocationNotesBibliographyIndexWhat People are Saying About This
Baker makes a consistently intriguing case for the centrality of financial themes to the varied literary landscape of eighteenth-century America -- drawing poems, autobiography, essays, drama, and prose fiction into a broad, cultural conversation that focuses on the risks and the necessity for 'credit' in both the economic and the imaginative construction of the United States. No other book that I can think of presents eighteenth-century American writing in this stimulating and promising context.
— Douglas Anderson, University of Georgia
The first work to trace the literary and, more broadly, cultural consequences of debt, speculation, and paper money in early America. The debates and metaphorics surrounding these issues made it the center for discussions of value, social contract, moral character, and textual representation. Baker takes this rich node of issues and powerfully demonstrates its centrality to an array of texts. An important book.
Baker makes a consistently intriguing case for the centrality of financial themes to the varied literary landscape of eighteenth-century America—drawing poems, autobiography, essays, drama, and prose fiction into a broad, cultural conversation that focuses on the risks and the necessity for 'credit' in both the economic and the imaginative construction of the United States. No other book that I can think of presents eighteenth-century American writing in this stimulating and promising context.—Douglas Anderson, University of Georgia
The first work to trace the literary and, more broadly, cultural consequences of debt, speculation, and paper money in early America. The debates and metaphorics surrounding these issues made it the center for discussions of value, social contract, moral character, and textual representation. Baker takes this rich node of issues and powerfully demonstrates its centrality to an array of texts. An important book.—Jay Fliegelman, Stanford University