Coinage and State Formation in Early Modern English Literature (Early Modern Cultural Studies 1500–1700)

A reassessment of the historic relation between money and the state through the lens of early modern English literature, Coinage and State Formation examines the political implications of the monetary form in light of material and visual properties of coins as well as the persistence of both intrinsic and extrinsic theories of value. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction: Rough Economies—The Politics and Poetics of Coinage....Pages 1-22 Dimensions of State Formation....Pages 23-58 More’s Utopia and the Logic of Debasement: Reason, Custom, and Natural Laws of Coinage....Pages 59-86 The Great Debasement and Its Aftermath....Pages 87-102 Coining Crimes and Moral Regulation in Measure for Measure ....Pages 103-133 “Mysteries of State”: The Political Theology of Coinage in Macbeth ....Pages 135-160 Foreign Coins and Domestic Exclusion in Thomas Dekker’s The Shoemaker’s Holiday ....Pages 161-186 Conclusion: The Changing Matter of Money....Pages 187-195 Back Matter....Pages 197-268 This book posits that coins and their (especially literary) representations were inextricably bound with several key factors for English state formation within the period. After surveying various definitions and histories of the "state" within the first chapter, this book identifies five major dimensions of state formation which correspond to the five chapters of the book: centralized institutional developments; the limits and extent of state and monarchical authority according to custom, reason and natural law; the development and expansion of a legal framework, in particular statute law, for