ENGL 40261 - Money in the Eighteenth Century: Wealth, Poverty, Debt, Gambling, Bubbles, Consumers

Institution:

University of Notre Dame

Subject:

English

Description:

The instruments of modern capitalism (including the Bank of England and a stock market) were invented at the end of the seventeenth century. The eighteenth century experiences the complexities and shocks of that system. The South Sea Bubble in England with the remarkable crash of the South Sea Company in 1720 gave the world its first lesson in a stock market crash. The feudal class system is pressed and reshaped to follow the nature of money. Theories about liberty cannot rightly ignore financial pressure, and personal freedom is deeply affected by relationships to money. Novelists, dramatists and poets of the late 17th and the 18th century examine a variety of forms of wealth and loss, and observe the startling effects of gains and losses of those at the bottom or the top of the social pyramid. Male and female authors observe the price and significance of luxury goods (silk, mohair, diamonds, and coaches) and of new pleasures (coffee and tea drinking, card parties); they also follow the cost of bare necessities (a loaf of bread). Slavery is part of the economic dynamic, and the new system amplifies slavery in bringing to the fore such new staples as sugar, tobacco and cotton. Gambling assumes a central role; public projects are funded by lotteries. Marriage is deeply involved in speculation. ("Speculation" is the name of a real game introduced to her family by Jane Austen.) We will examine the work of theorists such as Adam Smith and Malthus, as well as a variety of poems plays and novels from Bunyan to Austen dealing with social patterns and individual experiences of prosperity or loss.

Credits:

3.00

Credit Hours:

Prerequisites:

Corequisites:

Exclusions:

Level:

Instructional Type:

Lecture

Notes:

Additional Information:

Historical Version(s):

Institution Website:

www.nd.edu

Phone Number:

(574) 631-5000

Regional Accreditation:

North Central Association of Colleges and Schools

Calendar System:

Semester

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