The economic interpretation of literature is dominated by ideas derived from Marxism — ideas that demonize the market as the enemy of all that is good.
Rather than merely attack this view, this book, edited by well-known literary critics Paul Cantor (University of Virginia) and Stephen Cox (University of California, San Diego) turns the prevailing paradigm upside down — criticism (and a theory of criticism) from a pro-market point of view.
For free-market advocates, it means the discovery of a completely new area of friends in literature, friends that we didn't know we had, people like Willa Cather for example. Chapter after chapter map this out and prove it with detailed analytics and highly sophisticated, yet readable, criticism of the works in question.
Human beings are free and literature mirrors that freedom. Literary critics — particularly those influenced by Marxism — often turn texts and the characters they represent into predictable products of their environments. They view literature as the product of determinate economic and social circumstances, and authors as captives of class consciousness. With its economic determinism, Marxism views all human activity as following general laws and hence as predictable. Marxian critics typically view literature as the product of determinate economic and social circumstances, and authors as captives of class consciousness.
This book pursues economic interpretations of literature while respecting the freedom and creativity of authors. To do so, it draws upon a form of economics — the Austrian School — that places freedom and creativity at the center of its understanding of human action.
