1st Edition

The Merchant of Modernism The Economic Jew in Anglo-American Literature, 1864-1939

By Gary Levine Copyright 2003
    224 Pages
    by Routledge

    220 Pages
    by Routledge

    The Merchant of Modernism examines how the figure of the economic Jew symbolizes the struggle of authors from Dickens to Pound to reconcile their critique of capitalism with their own literary practices and how the shifting of the representations of this figure parallels the development of literary Modernism. From the sudden rise of the Victorian stock market to the Great Depression, the prominence of economic Jews in the writings of Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Edith Wharton, Frank Norris, Mark Twain, Henry James, Abraham Cahan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Willa Cather, T.S. Eliot, D.H. Lawrence, Wyndham Lewis, Ezra Pound, and James Joyce documents major shifts and events in capitalism, their impact on literature, and advances in economic thought. The Merchant of Modernism provides a sophisticated analysis of the role of economic history and economic thought in shaping both literary Modernism and modern anti-Semitism.

    Introduction; Chapter 1 Our Mutual Creditor; Chapter 2 “Made Viciously Cosmopolitan”; Chapter 3 Transactions without Risk; Chapter 4 Populist Naturalism; Chapter 5 The Merchant of Modernism; Chapter 6 “In Two Worlds at Once”; Chapter 7 “A Single Window”; Chapter 8 Modernism Squats on My Windowsill; Chapter 9 Modernism Squats on My Windowsill, Part II; Chapter 10 “Both Sides of the Question”;

    Biography

    Gary Martin Levine