Literarische Okonomik

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

Traditionally, literature/arts and economics were thought to be separate, even conflicting areas of human thought and social organization. While some sort of representation of economic activities has been a facet of art since the very beginning, coherent and sustained scholarly exploration of the “economy of literature,” to use the famous title of Marc Shell’s groundbreaking 1978 study, ensued only in the latter part of the 20th century. In many ways, only at the end of the century did some of the research really come to fruition as Jochen Hörisch’s Kopf oder Zahl (1996) firmly established the field in Germany, and Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osten published their wide-ranging collection of essays, The New Economic Criticism (1999). Since then, partially inspired by financial crises, economic upheaval, and rapidly changing contexts for and meanings of work, there has been a steady stream of significant contributions by thinkers like Richard T. Gray, Joseph Vogl, Franziska Schößler, Birger P. Priddat, Fritz Breithaupt, and Christine Künzel, to name just a few. Following Iuditha Balint’s characterization, one can identify five dimensions of literary economics. First, it is an analysis of literary representations of economic activities as social sphere. Second, it is the interpretation of economics as metaphor. Third, it is the exploration of how literature contributes to our knowledge of economic theories and models. Fourth, it engages the literary dimension of economic and quasi-economic texts. And, finally, it looks at how economic theories and models can be expanded with the help of literary theories and models. The proposed graduate course is situated in this research context, focusing on the first two dimensions of economic criticism identified by Balint. Expanding on much of previous research, the course takes a decidedly diachronic perspective, focusing on the (generously defined) 19th century. (Most previous research is situated around 1800 and then again around 1900, with scant references to the intervening years. This is surprising because the 19th century saw the most fundamental changes, reconfigurations, and disruptive economic turmoil.) As a seminar-style course, “Literarische Ökonomik” combines extensive readings in primary sources with a selection of contemporary theoretical treatise and some seminal research articles. It combines two foci – money as semiotic/semantic system and work as productive practice – the first well-researched in economic criticism, the latter less well attended to.