Correspondences and Dissensions between Economics and Literature

Résumé 0

In the 1830s, which mark the beginning of the era of all-powerful money in France, two major relationships arose between literature and economic life. On the one hand, a relationship of agreement and correspondence occurred when literature recognized the central importance of monetary matters in the new society, with the passions and intrigues money brings about, and it represented a world ruled by economic interests. In the nineteenth century, the novelistic genre thus becomes the major literary genre in accord with the energies and purposes of economic liberalism. On the other hand, a relationship of antagonism, of opposition, also emerged when the novelist or playwright displayed, through her/his characters, a very critical attitude towards the values of this new society. Literature thus offers a variety of the most radical and even the most ridiculous forms of Homo oeconomicus, and it also portrays characters that run contrary to the theoretical postulate of economists, characters whose deep drives do not seek the satisfaction of pecuniary interest, or maximum economic profit, but love, faith, or the propensity for political influence. Simultaneously multiple relations between money and language disclose themselves.