Literature and Capital

What is the value of literature? In this important new work, Thomas Docherty charts a new economic history of literary culture and its institutions in the modern age. From the literary patronage of the early modern period, through the colonial exploitation of the 18th and 19th centuries to the institutionalisation of “literature” in the neoliberal university of the 21st century, Literature and Capital explores the changing ways in which literary culture has both resisted and become complicit with exploitative economic notions of value. Drawing on the work of economic and political thinkers such as Thomas Piketty, Naomi Klein, Edward Said and Raymond Williams, the book includes readings of work by a wide range of canonical authors from Shakespeare, Donne and Swift to Tolstoy, Woolf and Ishiguro.

An impassioned critique of financial capitalism and its relationship to the institution of literature ... [The] breadth in literary selection no doubt reveals Docherty’s mastery over this canonical corpus ... Literature and Capital is written in a clear, accessible language., A radical reappraisal of the ways in which literary study challenges and is challenged by the ascent of money. This is a work of panoptic precision, in which intellectual passion is matched by sound scholarly scruple., Literature and Capital is a wonderful wide-ranging and erudite study. At once tolerant and angry, and written with great perception and persuasion, it details with a powerful intelligence the relationships between literature, land, education, enquiry and the various cultural organisations of capital. Thomas Docherty is a critical provocateur for our times and this book is the kind of urgent and committed scholarship that the present requires., An impassioned and cogent analysis of the entwining of literature and capital that continually impresses on account of its historical depth and critical vigilance. Above all, a compelling argument for why a radical study of literature is needed to engage with the multiple challenges of our times., This is a very important book in the backdrop of our contemporary thinking around literature, marketplace, survival, funds and capital. Through a deeply meshed intervention involving human, cultural, institutional and financial capital, Docherty has pulled off a stunning achievement where credit and literary creditilization and credibility have come into a formidable play.

Thomas Docherty is Professor of English at the University of Warwick, UK. He has published on most areas of English and comparative literature from the Renaissance to the present day. His previous books include After Theory (1996), The English Question (2008) and For the University (Bloomsbury, 2011).