The 'Invisible Hand' and British Fiction, 1818-1860 Adam Smith, Political Economy, and the Genre of Realism

by Courtemanche, Eleanor

• ISBN13: 9780230290785
• ISBN10: 0230290787
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-05-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Eleanor Courtemanche is 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.

Table of Contents

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