16456
Miscellaneous
WiSe 18/19: Literature and Economics – The Fable of the Market.
Thomas Rommel
Comments
“The distribution of wealth is one of today’s most widely discussed and controversial issues. But what do we really know about its evolution over the long term?”, Thomas Piketty asks in his 700-page study Capital in the Twenty-First Century. And of course Piketty, like most other economists before him, crunches numbers in search of answers. But he also turns to literary authors from antiquity to the present day who often deal with questions of wealth, property, the market, trade, tariffs, and credit, and by so doing they shed light on fundamental principles that govern the structure of society. How do individuals and countries interact, and what is it that makes people ready to re-think their self-interest versus the common good in light of the wealth of a nation? These are questions that play a role in many literary texts, often well before the term “economics” became known. Is it really true that “the worst of all the multitude, did something for the common good”, as Mandeville has it? Or that “a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”, as the narrator in Austen’s Pride and Prejudice maintains? And how does Shakespeare portray the merchant of Venice, or Barnes the commodification of culture?
In this seminar we will be tracing the invisible hand of economic thought in literature, and we will do this in the context of texts on philosophy, economics, and political thought – to see what Goldsmith alludes to when he claims that our “best companions [are] innocence and health; and [our] best riches, ignorance of wealth”.
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16 Class schedule
Regular appointments
Mon, 2018-10-15 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-10-22 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-10-29 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-11-05 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-11-12 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-11-19 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-11-26 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-12-03 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-12-10 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2018-12-17 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2019-01-07 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2019-01-14 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2019-01-21 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2019-01-28 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2019-02-04 10:00 - 12:00
Mon, 2019-02-11 10:00 - 12:00