The Other Exchange

Women, Servants, and the Urban Underclass in Early Modern English Literature

Denys Van Renen

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780803280991
• eBook ISBN: 9781496200464
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Literature

Prompted by commercial and imperial expansion such as the creation of the Bank of England in 1694 and the publication and circulation of Ben Jonson's The Staple of News in 1626, rapidly changingcultural, economic, and political realities in early modern Englandgenerated a paradigmatic shift in class awareness. Denys Van Renen's The Other Exchange demonstrates how middle-class consciousness not only emerged inopposition to the lived and perceived abuses of thearistocratic elitebutalso was fosteredby the economic and sociocultural influence of women and lower-class urban communities. Van Renencontends that, fascinated by the intellectual and cultural vibrancy of the urban underclass, many major authors and playwrights in the early modern era—Ben Jonson, Richard Brome, Aphra Behn, Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, ElizaHaywood, and Daniel Defoe—featured lower-class men and womenandother marginalized groupsin their work as a response to the shifting political and social terrain of the day. Van Renen illuminates this fascination with marginalized groups as a key element in the development of a middle-class mindset.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Early Modern Multitudes
• 1. Printing English Identity in Jonson’s The Staple of News and Brome’s The English Moore
• 2. Representing the Town on Brome’s Stage
• 3. Reanimating the Theater and English Social Life in Behn’s The Rover and The City Heiress
• 4. Warfare and Its Assault on English Rural Life in Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer
• 5. Vagabonds and the “Restoration” of London in Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year
• 6. Fiction and Finance in Haywood’s The British Recluse
• Epilogue: Jonathan Swift and the End of Labor
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• About Denys Van Renen
• Series List