Paul Crosthwaite

In recent years, money, finance, and the economy have emerged as central topics in literary studies. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and Economics explains the innovative critical methods that scholars have developed to explore the economic concerns of texts ranging from the medieval period to the present. Across seventeen chapters by field-leading experts, the book highlights how, throughout literary history, economic matters have intersected with crucial topics including race, gender, sexuality, nation, empire, and the environment. It also explores how researchers in other disciplines are turning to literature and literary theory for insights into economic questions. Combining thorough historical coverage with attention to emerging issues and approaches, this Companion will appeal to literary scholars and to historians and social scientists interested in the literary and cultural dimensions of economics.

In the twenty-first century, leading publishers are under intense pressure from their conglomerate owners and shareholders to generate growth and profits. This book shows how these pressures have transformed the contemporary novel. Paul Crosthwaite argues that recent British and American authors have internalized the market logics of the financial sector and book trade, resulting in the production of works of 'market metafiction' in which authors reflect obsessively on their writing's positioning in the literary marketplace. The Market Logics of Contemporary Fiction reveals the entanglement of fictional narrative and market dynamics to be the central phenomenon of contemporary literary culture. It engages with work by key authors including Iain Sinclair, Don DeLillo, Kathy Acker, Bret Easton Ellis, Chris Kraus, Percival Everett, David Foster Wallace, Colson Whitehead, Anne Billson, Hari Kunzru, Barbara Browning, Teju Cole, Ben Lerner, Tao Lin, Nell Zink, Joshua Cohen, Sheila Heti, and

The radical, 'postmodernist' waves of experimentation that swept Anglo-American fiction from the late 1960s constitute a delayed response to the upheavals of the Second World War, yet the legacy of th

The etymological affinity between ‘criticism’ and ‘crisis’ has never been more resonant than it is today, when social life is increasingly understood as defined by a succession of overlapping global c

The etymological affinity between ‘criticism’ and ‘crisis’ has never been more resonant than it is today, when social life is increasingly understood as defined by a succession of overlapping global c

What does 'the market' look like? What does money really stand for? How can the abstractions of high finance be made visible? Show Me the Money: The Image of Finance, 1700 to the Present documents how