Money and the Age of Shakespeare ― Essays in New Economic Criticism

In this collection literary scholars, theorists and historians deploy new economic techniques to illuminate English Renaissance literature in fresh ways. Contributors variously explore poetry's precarious perch between gift and commodity; the longing for family in The Comedy of Errors as symbolically expressing the alienating pressures of mercantilism; Measure for Measure 's representation of singlewomen and the feminization of poverty; the collision between two views of money in a possible collaboration between Shakespeare and Middleton; the cultural spread of an accounting mentality and quantitative thinking; and money as it crosses the frontier between price and pricelessness, and from early bodily-injury insurance schemes to The Merchant of Venice .

DOUGLAS BRUSTER Assistant Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, USABARBARA CORRELL Teaches Renassiance Literature and Cultural Studies at Cornell University, New York, USAROBERT DARCY Assistant Professor of English at Utica College, New York, USAVALERIE FORMAN Assistant Professor of Renaissance and Seventeeth-Century Literature and Culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USADAVID HAWKES Associate Professor of English at Lehigh University, Pennsylvania, USAJOHN JOWETT Reader in Shakespeare Studies at the Shakespeare Institute at the University of Birmingham, UKNATASHA KORDA Associate Professor of English at Wesleyan University, USAMICHAEL LEMAHIEU Doctoral Candidate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, USAKATHARINE EISAMAN MAUS Professor of English at the University of Virginia, USASTEVE MENTZ Assistant Professor of English at St. John's University in Queens, New York, USAMARK NETZLOFF Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Wilwaukee, USATERESA LANPHER NUGENT Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Colorado at Boulder, USACURTIS PERRY Associate Professor of English at ARizona State University, USASCOTT CUTLER SHERSHOW Author of Puppets and 'Popular' CultureERIC V. SPENCER Associate Professor of English at Albertson College of Idaho, USALUKE WILSON Associate Professor of English at Ohio State Univeristy, USA