Idols of the Marketplace

Idolatry and Commodity Fetishism in English Literature, 1580–1680

D. Hawkes

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2001
• Print ISBN: 9780312240073
• eBook ISBN: 9780312292690
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Postmodern society seems incapable of elaborating an ethical critique of the market economy. Early modern society showed no such reticence. Between 1580 and 1680, Aristotelian teleology was replaced as the dominant mode of philosophy in England by Baconian empiricism. This was a process with implications for every sphere of life: for politics and theology, economics and ethics, aesthetics and sexuality. Through nuanced and original readings of Shakespeare, Herbert, Donne, Milton, Traherne, and Bunyan, David Hawkes sheds light on the antitheatrical controversy, and early modern debates over idolatry and value and trade. Hawkes argues that the people of Renaissance England believed that the decline of telos resulted in a reified, fetishistic mode of consciousness which manifests itself in such phenomena as religious idolatry, commodity fetish, and carnal sensuality. He suggests that the resulting early modern critique of the market economy has much to offer postmodern society.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Series Editor’s Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter One: Idolatry and Political Economy
• Chapter Two: Commodity Fetishism and Theology
• Chapter Three: Idolatry and Commodity Fetishism in the Antitheatrical Controversy
• Chapter Four: Sodomy, Usury, and the Narrative of Shakespeare’s Sonnets
• Chapter Five: Typology and Objectification in George Herbert’s The Temple
• Chapter Six: Alchemical and Financial Value in the Poetry of John Donne
• Chapter Seven: The Politics of Character in Milton’s Divorce Tracts
• Chapter Eight: Thomas Traherne: A Critique of Political Economy
• Chapter Nine: John Bunyan’s One-Dimensional Man
• Notes
• Index