The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism: American Literature at the Turn of the Century (The New Historicism: Studies in Cultural Poetics Book 2)

__The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism__ discusses ways of creating value in turn-of-the-century American capitalism. Focusing on such topics as the alienation of property, the invention of masochism, and the battle over free silver, it examines the participation of cultural forms in these phenomena. It imagines a literary history that must at the same time be social, economic, and legal; and it imagines a literature that, to be understood at all, must be understood both as a producer and a product of market capitalism. The Gold Standard and the Logic of Naturalism discusses ways of creating value in turn-of-the-century American capitalism. Focusing on such topics as the alienation of property, the invention of masochism, and the battle over free silver, it examines the participation of cultural forms in these phenomena. It imagines a literary history that must at the same time be social, economic, and legal; and it imagines a literature that, to be understood at all, must be understood both as a producer and a product of market capitalism. CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS INTRODUCTION: THE WRITER'S MARK 1. SISTER CARRIE'S POPULAR ECONOMY 2. DREISER'S FINANCIER: THE MAN OF BUSINESS AS A MAN OF LETTERS 3. ROMANCE AND REAL ESTATE 4. THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF CONTRACT 5. THE GOLD STANDARD AND THE LOGIC OF NATURALISM 6. CORPORATE FICTION 7. ACTION AND ACCIDENT: PHOTOGRAPHY AND WRITING INDEX