Metaphors of Economic Exploitation in Literature, 1885-1914

Vampiric Enterprise

Jane Ford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2024
• Print ISBN: 9781032800080
• eBook ISBN: 9781040097854
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Metaphors of Economic Exploitation in Literature, 1885–1914 explores the complex network of metaphors that emerged around late nineteenth-century conceptions of economic self-interest – metaphors that dramatised the predatory, conflictual, and exploitative basis of relations between nations, institutions, sexes, and people in a fin-de-siècle economy that was perceived by many as outwardly belligerent. More specifically, this book is about the vampire, cannibal, and related genera of economic metaphor that penetrate the major discourses of the period in ways that have yet to be understood. In chapters that examine socialist fiction and newspapers; the imperial quest romance; the decadent and supernatural tales of Henry James and Vernon Lee; and the Catholic novels of Lucas Malet, Ford assesses the breadth and variety of these metaphors, and considers how they filter the long-standing philosophical ideas about self-interest and the conflictual 'economic man'. This volume is essential reading for students and scholars of fin-de-siècle literature and culture as well as those with an interest in the relationship between literature, economics, and anti-capitalist movements.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Vampire Economics, Rebel Rhetoric
• 1 Fin-de-Siècle Socialism and the Problem of ‘Fatmanism’
• 2 On Vampires and Cannibals: Bertram Mitford’s African Quest Romance
• 3 ‘That Odd Double-Graspingness of Nature’: Parasitical Intimacies in the Writing of Henry James and Vernon Lee
• 4 Divine Economy: Socialism, Capitalism, and the Fiction of Lucas Malet
• Index