Money and American Literature

Few topics are as central to the American literary imagination as money. American writers' preoccupations with money predate the foundation of the United States and persist to the present day. Writers have been among the sharpest critics and most enchanted observers of an American social world dominated by the 'cash nexus'; and they have reckoned with imaginative writing's own deep and ambivalent entanglements with the logics of inscription, circulation, and valuation that define the money economy itself. As a dominant measure of value, money has also profoundly shaped representations of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality. American literature's engagements with money – and with directly related topics including debt, credit, finance, and the capitalist market – are among Americanists' most prominent concerns. This landmark volume synthesizes and builds upon the abundance of research in the field to provide the first comprehensive mapping of money's crucial role over five centuries of American literary history.